DDRESSES, LECTURES 

AND PAPERS'** 



WITH 



ABTr>nR^PHIC SKETCH OF 




Class J£5 £66^ 

Book ^Erl^ 

Copyiight^j" h/0 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr 



ADDRESSES, LECTURES, 
AND PAPERS 

OF 

ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 



A SELECTION FROM THE 

ADDRESSES, LECTURES 

AND PAPERS, 

WITH 

A BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH, OF 

ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

OF UXBRIDGE, MASS. 



CAMBRIDGE 

prtncet) at tlie liibnsritie pnss 

1910 






COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



'C(.Aii?]749 



CONTENTS 



Foreword xi 

I. Biographic Sketch 1 

II. Myles Standish, a Lecture 15 

in. Authorship of Shakespeare, a Lecture . 44 

IV. Address at the Dedication of the Thayer 
Memorial Library Bthlding in Uxbridge, 
Massachusetts, June 20, 1894 .... 72 

V. Address on the Occasion of the Services in j 
Memory of General Grant, held at Ux- 
bridge, Massachusetts, August 8, 1885 . 83 

VI. Address at the Dedication of the Soldiers' 
Monument in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, 
September 14, 1898 100 

VII. Two Unwritten Chapters of History: Chap- 
ter I, The Yellow Fever at New Bern, 
North Carolina, in 1864 ; Chapter II, An 
Extraordinary Military Execution at 
said New Bern, August 14, 1864. A Paper 
given before the Military Order of the 
Loyal Legion of the United States in 

Boston, April 6, 1910 119 

v 



CONTENTS 

VIII. Some of the Author's Verses 137 

IX. The Pleasures of Poetry 150 

X. Story of the Trip to New Bern to dedicate 
the Monument to Massachusetts Sol- 
diers. Told at a Meeting of the Loyal 
Legion in Boston, December 3, 1909 . . 167 

XI. Address at the Dedication of the Soldiers' 
Monument, erected in Memory of the 
Massachusetts Soldier-Dead in the Na- 
tional Cemetery at New Bern, North 
Carolina, November 11, 1908 181 



FOREWORD 

An introductory word of explanation concerning 
the publication of this book may not be out of place. 
The volume marks the crystallization of a wide-spread 
feeling that the addresses and lectures of our honored 
fellow-citizen, Judge Arthur A. Putnam, should be 
preserved in permanent form and made available for 
general use. These lectures and addresses are a trea- 
sure-house of historical data, and are replete with wit, 
eloquence, and patriotic fervor, and should by no means 
be lost to posterity. 

There was also a general desire on the part of the 
community to pay its tribute of esteem and affection 
to our Nestor, who for so many years has entertained 
and thrilled not only local but national audiences. Of 
the more than forty addresses that have been delivered 
from time to time during the passing years, ten have 
been chosen as especially worthy of place in this hon- 
orary volume. 

As is the case in every expression of public senti- 
ment, it was necessary for a few persons to represent 
the larger circle of those interested in the project. To 
this end the undersigned Committee of Sixteen organ- 
ized for the purpose of publishing the Life and Lectures 
of Judge Putnam. 



FOREWORD 

After the plans of the committee were fully matured, 
the next step was to inform Judge Putnam of our pur- 
pose, and to secure his approval of the enterprise. 
While the proposal came as a great surprise to the 
Judge, his consent and cooperation were finally se- 
cured. The committee desires to express its appre- 
ciation of his arduous labors in the preparation of 
the manuscript for the printer. The committee also 
desires to thank all those who have cooperated in 
making the enterprise a success, and especially to ac- 
knowledge its indebtedness to Rev. F. L. Carr for 
his unstinted labors as Secretary of the Committee. 
* (Signed) Dr. William L. Johnson, Chairman. 

Mb. William A. L. Bazeley 

Mrs. Elizabeth Daniels 

Miss Abby E. Day 

Mrs. Helen C. Hanson 

Mr. William E. Hayward 

Mrs. Elizabeth C. Hayward 

Mr. Harry T. Hayward 

Mrs. Sarah W. Murdock 

Mr, Arthur R. Taft 

Mr. Fred C. Taft 

Hon, George S. Taft 

Miss Helen W. Taft 

Judge Francis N. Thayer 

Mr. Arthur Wheelock 

Hon. Arthur F. Whitin 



BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH 

[The subjoined biographical sketch is substantially 
the same as appeared in the Worcester Evening Gazette, 
December 7, 1897, except as modified and extended to be 
applicable to the present time.] 

The fact that Judge Arthur A. Putnam of Ux- 
bridge recently completed the twenty -fifth year of his 
service as Judge of the Second District Court of South- 
ern Worcester, was not entirely overlooked. His per- 
sonal friends, including attorneys, officers and other 
citizens, were strongly disposed to signalize the twenty- 
fifth anniversary by some testimonial or other in re- 
cognition of the event, but were discouraged by Judge 
Putnam's disinclination to receive it. Judge Putnam 
belongs to the sturdy old school of attorneys whose 
training was many-sided and experience broad. His 
natural gifts and positive character have given him 
prominence in the community. His activities have not 
been confined strictly to the bounds of his profession, 
for he has taken an interest in literary subjects, has 
been successful as a political factor, — his services 
having been entirely in the interest of others, — and 
as an orator he has been much in demand. The old 
proverb of a prophet without honor among his own 
people cannot be applied to Judge Putnam, for, while 

1 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

he is widely known, it has been by his own townsmen 
in Danvers, Blackstone and Uxbridge that he has been 
held in the highest and most affectionate regard — not 
only as a prominent citizen but also as a personal friend 
and wise counsellor. His fellow townsmen have always 
given him attentive and enthusiastic audiences. The 
testimony of those who have followed him closely, 
during his long career as Judge, is that * 'Justice, tem- 
pered with mercy," has been a marked characteristic 
of his decisions on the Bench. 

Born in Danvers, November 18, 1829, Judge Put- 
nam is the youngest son of Elias Putnam, whose 
grandfather, Edmund, was captain of one of the eight 
Danvers companies that marched for Lexington on 
the memorable 19th of April, 1775. On his mother's 
side. Judge Putnam is of Revolutionary stock. His 
great grandfather, Jabez Ross, was in the Revolution- 
ary War, and had five sons who were in the service, 
four of them being in the Battle of Bunker Hill. His 
grandfather, Adam Ross, was in that battle and served 
four or five years in the war. 

The subject of this sketch was educated in the 
lie schools of his native town, at the academies in West- 
field, Massachusetts, and Thetford and West Randolph 
Vermont, and at Dartmouth College. He left Dart- 
mouth at the end of the sophomore year. He pursued 
the study of law at the Dane Law school, in Cambridge, 
and in the oflSces of Culver, Parker & Arthur (late Pres- 
ident Arthur) of New York, and of Ives & Peabody, in 



BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH 

Salem. During his academical course he taught school 
several terms. In his youth he showed a marked pro- 
pensity to be a musician. Without an instructor he 
became proficient in playing various instruments, 
including the bugle, posthorn, cornet, trombone, flute, 
violin, violincello and piano. He raised and led a brass 
band. He composed and arranged music for his band. 
He also had a quadrille band. He got up one of the first 
minstrel troupes and gave concerts. While a stripling 
he played the first posthorn two seasons in the Salem 
Brass band then led by F. W. Morse, who as a bugler 
was second only to the famous Ned Kendall. Upon 
going away to school, however, he dropped music, 
save as he has always kept up his acquaintance with 
the violin. 

Judge Putnam was an earnest member of the Re- 
publican party from its formation till 1900, when with 
others in all parts of the country he left it, believing it 
had grossly abandoned its principles in entering upon 
the policy of colonial empire. He began making politi- 
cal speeches about the time he became a voter. In the 
Fremont campaign of 1856 he spoke frequently in 
Essex county, and was that year elected a representa- 
tive to the Legislature from Dan vers, being the young- 
est but one of the then 357 members of the lower branch. 
He was appointed one of the monitors of the House, 
and was a member of the committee on elections. He 
was at that time studying law, but, his eyesight failing 
him, he was obliged to suspend study for two years. 

3 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Resuming it, he was admitted to the bar in 1859, and 
was that year again elected a representative to the 
Legislature, and held the position of chairman of the 
committee on probate and chancery. This unexpected 
and unasked-for honor to one just admitted to the 
bar was in recognition of his activity among Essex 
County members in determining the election of John 
A. Goodwin of Lowell as speaker, against Charles Hale 
of Boston, who had been speaker the previous year. 

It was in May, 1860, that Governor Banks called the 
extra session of the General Court to take action in re- 
lation to pleuro-pneumonia among the cattle, over 
which the state had gone wild with excitement and 
fright. The Legislature convened in all the solemnity 
of a prayer meeting. After several days of alarming 
prognostications by learned doctors of dire results if 
something should not be done forthwith, the joint 
committee, who had gravely heard the distressing 
lucubrations, reported a bill in the Senate, and it was 
rushed through that body. It came down to the House, 
and under a suspension of the rules it was there going 
through its several stages without a word of debate. 
At the third reading the member from Dan vers moved 
to strike from the bill as much as provided for killing 
the cattle. This was about equivalent to moving to kill 
the bill altogether. His act was regarded a piece of 
madness, and the chair, then temporarily occupied by 
Mr. Hale of Boston, hesitated to entertain the motion. 
He, however, could not do otherwise, and the mover 

4 



BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH 

rose to speak on the question. He had carefully writ- 
ten out his speech and memorized it. From open to 
close he was interrupted by questions of order and other 
manifestations of impatience, but he succeeded in 
making his speech. The question was then put on the 
motion. The mover alone voted for it, while the " nay " 
was such an uproarious shout as all but startled the 
old codfish over the Speaker's desk. 

In the course of his speech, Mr. Putnam had pre- 
dicted that in less than two weeks the excitement 
would be over and the folly of the proposed legislation 
be apparent. These were his words: "Stay here a week 
longer and I predict you will not pass this bill. Already 
there is a change in public opinion. People begin to 
think there has been undue excitement on this subject. 
When the cattle have been three weeks in the pastures 
and on the hills, away from ill-ventilated barns and 
breathing the free air of heaven, your pleuro-pneu- 
monia will pass away like a mist before the rising sun." 
The event literally verified the prediction and the legis- 
lation of the extra session was soon a dead letter. Then 
there was much curiosity to know what was the speech 
of Mr. Putnam of Danvers, as the papers had not at 
all reported it. It was published in the Salem Regis- 
ter and distributed in response to many requests. 

A few days after the assault on Fort Sumter Mr. Put- 
nam presided at the first war meeting held in Danvers, 
and then turned his law office into a recruiting office and 
soon had raised a full company, composed of the best 

5 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

young men of his part of the town. Elected captain 
of it, he procured the services of Major Foster of the 
Salem Cadets as instructor, and kept the company 
under daily drill for over five weeks. His company 
and nine others of Essex county were then ordered 
into camp at Fort Warren, to constitute the 14th In- 
fantry, afterwards the 1st Heavy Artillery. After a stay 
of seven weeks at the fort, the regiment left for Wash- 
ington, but Captain Putnam, along with other line 
oflScers and the lieutenant-colonel, soon resigned on 
account of differences with the colonel. He came home 
and resumed his law practice, but in the summer of 
1863 the war fever possessed him again, and he joined 
Colonel Frankle of the 2nd Heavy Artillery in recruiting 
the 3rd battalion of that regiment, holding war meet- 
ings and speaking in various parts of Essex and Mid- 
dlesex counties. The battalion was speedily recruited 
and he was commissioned senior 1st lieutenant of Co. 
K and afterwards captain of Co. E of the regiment. 

The service of this regiment, which was the last of 
the Massachusetts regiments to return home after the 
war, was mainly in garrisoning forts along the Atlan- 
tic coast and skirmishing with the enemy on expedi- 
tions into the interior for the capture of cotton and 
other spoils. When asked what principal battle of the 
war he was in. Captain Putnam answers: "The battle 
of Yellow Fever at New Bern," in which the mortality 
was hardly less than that of many a big battle of the 
war. He was in the midst of the pestilence in all the 



BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH 

six weeks of Its prevalence, and was one of the few com- 
missioned officers who kept on their feet throughout 
the period. During his service in the 2d Artillery he 
was judge advocate in the trial of cases at Plymouth, 
North Carolina, and for a time was assistant provost 
marshal of the District of North Carolina, having full 
charge for several weeks of the central office at New 
Bern, while his chief. Major Lawson, was in the hos- 
pital. 

Though he did not join the Grand Army of the Re- 
public till 1886, he has been prominent in the order as 
commander for two years of his post, as delegate to 
state and national encampments and on the staff of 
various department commanders, holding the position 
in 1891 of judge advocate under Department Com- 
mander Smith. He has spoken much at camp-fires and 
has always been in demand as Memorial Day orator. 
He has delivered a memorial address every year for 
the last thirty-five years, sometimes giving two ad- 
dresses the same day, and in one instance three. 

After the war, Mr. Putnam was led by a mere in- 
cident to take a law office in Blackstone. This he did 
in the spring of 1866. There were then four other law- 
yers in the town, but he soon acquired a practice, to 
which he devoted himself till his appointment in 1872, 
the year of its creation, as judge of the Second Dis- 
trict Court of Southern Worcester. This office, he says, 
he sought, and says it is the only office he ever really 
did seek, and he sought it because he found his eyes 

7 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

were giving way again, and he felt that he might per- 
form the duties of the position and still keep his eyesight 
in fairly good state. In the four years prior to his ap- 
pointment, he tried some thirty cases, civil and crim- 
inal, before juries in the Superior Court, and was con- 
sidered fortunate in obtaining verdicts. Not a few of 
his arguments are well remembered by older members 
of the bar and ex-jurymen for the hilarity they created 
in the courtroom. Perhaps his humor, irony and sar- 
casm were most displayed in the slander suit of Blanch- 
ard vs. Wheelock, and in the breach of promise suit 
of Shugro vs. Scanlan. In the former the plaintiff was 
a fish pedler and the defendant the proprietor of the 
Union hotel in Blackstone. The trial lasted nearly 
three days, and Mr. Putnam, for the plaintiff, was 
pitted against Senator Hoar, S. A. Burgess, the old 
attorney at Blackstone, and Samuel Utley, now judge 
of the Central District Court. At the close of the sec- 
ond day the opinion was prevalent that the plaintiff's 
case had gone all to pieces, and the venerable Judge 
Rockwell said as much to the plaintiff's attorney. But 
there was a large bill of costs at stake, and on the morn- 
ing of the third day there appeared as witnesses for the 
plaintiff ten of the most substantial and best-looking 
men in Blackstone. They did not know much for or 
against the plaintiff, but as they loomed up along the 
aisle with right hands raised for the oath, they added 
materially to the respectability of his case. They 
were examined in a mild way by both sides. Then 

8 



BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH 

came the argument, Mr. Hoar for the defendant and 
Mr. Putnam for his client, whose character had been 
remorselessly attacked. The jury found for the plain- 
tiflF. 

Though Judge Putnam has been considerably on 
the political stump during the thirty-seven years of his 
judicial life, his more notable activities in caucuses 
and conventions were prior to his holding court. His 
zeal and efforts in politics have been enlisted in behalf 
of others, and he has participated in some lively con- 
tests. It is to be remembered that in 1868, as well as 
in years before, Blackstone was a Republican town 
and sent five delegates to Republican conventions. 
In that year occurred the memorable contest between 
George F. Hoar of Worcester and Frank W. Bird of 
Walpole for the congressional nomination. The town 
had for a long time been dominated by a ring, and the 
ring was confidently coimting on electing delegates for 
Mr. Bird. As the time approached for the Blackstone 
caucus, it became apparent that the five Blackstone 
delegates were essential to the nomination of either 
candidate. Consequently the attention of the whole 
district was fixed on the pivotal town. The caucus 
drew forth nearly every Republican of the town, and 
it lasted till near midnight, every inch of ground be- 
ing contested. By special understanding Mr. Putnam 
made all the motions, and did all the talking on the 
side of the friends of Mr. Hoar, and he combated on 
the floor six or more speakers who had been accustomed 

9 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

to do the smart talking in the Blackstone caucuses. 
Seven test votes were had. By keeping forces well in 
hand, the cause of Mr. Hoar prevailed at each vote by 
a majority varying from three to twelve. The five dele- 
gates chosen determined in convention the nomination 
of George F. Hoar, and started him on his splendid 
career of statesmanship. He had not sought the nom- 
ination. It sought him as rarely nomination ever did 
before or has since sought the man. A few years before 
his death Senator Hoar, in conversation with Rev. Dr. 
Alfred P. Putnam, inquiringly remarked: "Do you 
know that it was your brother's action in the Black- 
stone caucus that changed the whole course of my 
public life?" 

Judge Putnam began his contributions to the Press 
in 1855 during his studentship of four months in the 
office of Culver, Parker, and Arthur of New York, 
writing a series of letters to the Salem Register on "Life 
in the Metropolis." He has ever since written quite 
often for the press — is the author of magazine arti- 
cles and various pamphlets. For about a year in the 
war time he was war editor of the Peabody Press. 
While in the army at Plymouth, North Carolina, he 
started and conducted for two months a small weekly 
paper called The Flag, using for this purpose an old 
printing-press left behind by the Confederates on their 
evacuation of the town, and calling to his aid a printer 
or two by trade, found among the troops. His book, 
"Ten Years a Police Court Judge," published in 1884, 

10 



BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH 

is still sold. The history of Blackstone in the "History 
of Worcester County," published by Jewett & Co. in 
1879, is his contribution. As a lecturer before lyceums 
he has attracted attention. His lecture on Myles 
Standish has been pronounced a remarkable present- 
ation of the Pilgrim story compressed into an hour. 
This, which may be considered his favorite lecture, 
he has given within the last thirty-three years in vari- 
ous parts of the state and is still giving it as much as 
ever. His lecture on the "Authorship of Shakespeare" 
was the result of much reading of the plays attributed 
to Shakespeare and study of the books on the "Ba- 
conian Theory." This he has given many times in 
cities and towns of the State, and his handling of the 
subject, it has been said, almost persuades his hearers 
to the belief of Whittier, — "Whether Bacon wrote 
the wonderful plays or not, I am quite sure that the 
man Shakespeare neither did nor could." Mr. Putnam, 
while in Danvers, was the prime mover in organizing 
the second Shakespeare Club in the United States. 
The late General Henry K. Oliver, who, while a citizen 
of Lawrence, was foremost in organizing the first one, 
declared that the club in Danvers was the next in the 
order of organization. 

Besides various other addresses he has given that 
were published at the time, should be mentioned his 
Memorial address on General Grant at Uxbridge in 
1885 and his address at the dedication of the Thayer 
Memorial Building in 1894. 

11 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Notable among his political speeches is to be re- 
membered his arraignment of Joseph H. Walker as 
the candidate for Congress in 1888 at the anti- Walker 
meeting in Continental hall, Worcester. The anti- 
Walker resolutions unanimously passed on that occa- 
sion were, it is said, the joint production of himself 
and T. C. Bates. The appearance of Mr. Walker as 
candidate so soon after his opposition to Blaine's can- 
didacy had aroused considerable feeling among the 
Republicans, and this found expression in Judge Put- 
nam's speech, which abounded in sarcasm and thrusts 
that delighted the audience. 

Judge Putnam has presided over various political 
conventions : county, councillor, congressional and sen- 
atorial. He was alternate to the national convention 
in 1860 that nominated Abraham Lincoln, and to that 
in 1876 that nominated Rutherford B. Hayes. He 
early displayed courage, as for instance, on the occa- 
sion of leaving Dartmouth College at the close of the 
sophomore year. Though daily reminded of the con- 
servative theology of the college, he had dared to write 
and was proceeding to read in the class-room a his- 
torical essay on Thomas Paine, author of "The Age 
of Reason." He was stopped by the professor and told 
to sit down. Probably no one was more surprised than 
the essayist when, thirty-three years later, the college 
conferred on him the honorary degree of A. M. 

As before observed, the Judge left the Republican 
party in 1900 by reason of its departure from Repub- 

12 



BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH 

lican principles. Immediately he joined the Anti-Im- 
perialist League which not long before had been or- 
ganized in Boston, with the venerable George S. Bout- 
well, one of the founders in chief of the Republican 
party, as its President. With this League he has ever 
since been associated, being most of the time either one 
of its vice-presidents or a member of its executive com- 
mittee. On the occasion of the memorial meeting in 
Faneuil Hall in honor of the lamented Boutwell, April, 
1905, he was one of the speakers. In 1901 he was the 
Democratic candidate for Attorney-General, and with 
the Democratic party from 1900 to the present time he 
has usually voted, believing he can in no available 
way better give expression at the polls to his life-long 
devotion to the principles on which the Republic of the 
United States was founded and for which as a soldier 
he contended in the Civil War. In the Presidential 
year of 1900 he was permanent chairman of the mock 
Presidential Convention held in Faneuil Hall by the 
debating clubs of Boston and vicinity — a notable 
occasion. In the last four years, though apparently 
as decided as ever in his political opinions, he has 
appeared but seldom at political meetings. 

Judge Putnam removed from Blackstone to Ux- 
bridge in May, 1877. For many years he has been, and 
is now, a Trustee of the Uxbridge Savings Bank, a part 
of the time a member of the financial committee. For 
five years he was President of the Trustees of the 
PubHc Library. He has served on the School Committee 

13 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

in Uxbridge, and formerly in Danvers and Blackstone. 
He was a member of the Library Committee of the 
Peabody Institute in Danvers from the time of its es- 
tablishment till he ceased to be a citizen of the town. 
He is of the Unitarian denomination and for six years 
was chairman of the parish committee of the society 
in Uxbridge. He is one of the oldest members of the 
Harvard Law School Association, as he is of the Alpha 
Delta Phi Chapter of Dartmouth College. He be- 
longs to the Military Order of the Loyal Legion as well 
as to the Grand Army of the Republic, and is unfailing 
in his attachment to these veteran organizations. He 
is now in his thirty-eighth year as Judge of the District 
Court, and it is believed there is but one other judge 
in the State older in judicial service. 

He recently delivered the dedicatory address on the 
occasion of the dedication of the monument erected in 
memory of the Massachusetts soldier-dead in the na- 
tional cemetery at New Bern, having been selected for 
that purpose by the unanimous voice of the Memorial 
Committee, representing the surviving members of the 
seventeen regiments who served during the Civil War 
in North Carolina. 

He was married November 25, 1868, to Helen Irv- 
ing Staples, daughter of Arteman and Esther Staples of 
Blackstone, Massachusetts. His children are Alden 
Lyon, born October 27, 1869, and Beatrice, born 
December 15, 1873. 



MYLES STANDISH^ 

I AM here by your politeness to dwell for a while 
in what some sometimes call the dead past, but which, 
it would seem, were better named the silent yet ever 
voiceful past; and it is to that, the past so viewed, 
that I would, as well as I may, take and there detain 
you an hour or so, if your patience should so long en- 
dure, regretful though I am that mine is not a better 
tongue to touch upon the persons and places, the 
scenes and occurrences which should figure not in- 
distinctly before us as we contemplate the extraor- 
dinary and altogether peculiar circumstances of the 
first, the initial settlement of New England. The set- 
tlement, I mean, that took root; the one which in 
all likelihood had never taken root but for the person- 
ality of a single individual to whose share more par- 
ticularly therein, in the epochal event, I venture to 
invite your attention. 

Of all the instances that illustrate how vital to the 
completeness of historic narrative is the career of 

' Substantially as here published, this lecture was first given in 
1877. Modified from time to time more or less in matter and phrase- 
ologj', it was subsequently given several times nearly every year until 
1909, before historical societies and literary clubs in various parts 
of the State. In its present form it was given as the annual address 
before the Antiquarian Society of Concord, Massachusetts, Septem- 
ber 12, 1908, being the anniversary of the incorporation of the town 
and the organization of the Society. 

15 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

some one of the various personages of the plot, few 
perhaps, if any, exceed that of the marvelous story of 
the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock. To im- 
ply the preposterous or the impossible in the domain 
of art or letters we speak of " the play of Hamlet with- 
out the part of Hamlet." With equal propriety and 
force might we come to speak of the mission of the 
Mayflower without the sword of Myles Standish. 

The military hero of the Pilgrims, Myles Standish, 
the Captain of Plymouth! of whom to speak is to dis- 
course of the whole peerless little band who, to do 
good and plant religion, quit native land and all the 
cherished associations of nativity, and after their 
protracted but unsatisfactory sojourn at Ley den in 
Holland, embarked, fathers, mothers and children, 
crowded and slimly provided, upon a doubtful bark, 
to be tempest-tossed in a long voyage upon an untried 
ocean, to land amid the blasts of winter upon an un- 
known shore untrod by civilized man, there to en- 
counter the inclemencies of the season, the attacks of 
disease, the woes of famine and the ferocities of the 
Savage; coping with all these terrors and distresses 
patiently, bravely, trustfully, and so triumphantly 
at last that civilization and liberty, civil and religious, 
have ever since referred their freshest impulses and 
grandest hopes and achievements to the "stepping 
stones" laid by the hands of the "several Pilgrims," 
who "did as the Lord's free people, join themselves 
by a covenant into a church state to walk in all His 

16 



MYLES STANDISH 

ways, according to their best endeavors, whatever it 
might cost them." 

I touch upon an old, old theme — old but never 
to be out-worn ! A tale for more than two and three- 
fourths centuries the favorite of historians, who have 
never wearied with the details of the narrative or the 
generalizations it irresistibly provokes; which has en- 
grossed the attention of the profoundest statesman- 
ship and amplified the range of philosophy; which 
has lifted the discussions of theology to unfamiliar 
heights and invested with a heavenlier significance 
the discussions of the divine; which has kindled a 
spirit of heroism the loftiest, and unfolded as with reve- 
lation the possibilities of human enterprise; which has 
intensified the enthusiasms of romance and inspired 
the muse in many a strain of immortal verse; and 
which, while it has sustained the general voice of ora- 
tory in a kind of perpetual eulogium to enrich the 
books of our schools, has called forth from the greatest 
of modern orators the sublimest out-burst of com- 
memorative eloquence in all the English language. 

Nevertheless, it seems to mortal view that but for 
Myles Standish the Pilgrims had never accomplished 
the fact of colonial settlement — that their attempt 
had sufiPered the fate of all previous efforts to colonize 
New England, that of total failure; and that their 
whole matchless pilgrimage and achievement, achiev- 
ing the indefeasible foot-hold on this rugged northern 
soil, "deep and strong enough for an empire," with 

17 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

the measureless moral prestige that ensued and which 
widens and strengthens at every circuit of the seasons 

— that all this would have been an unknown factor 
in the history of the world. It is equally logical, doubt- 
less, to observe that but for Carver, but for Bradford, 
Brewster, Winslow, the great train of results would 
not have followed. But Carver, Bradford, Brewster, 
Winslow were the head and front of that godliest type 
of Puritanism which started out from Old England 
to the New "for purity of worship and liberty of con- 
science." With them the avowed, controlling motive 
renders their pilgrimage extraordinary to be sure, but 
far less extraordinary and peculiar. As for Standish, 
it is of remarkable things one of the most conspicuous 

— in all the Providences of God there seems scarcely 
a providence more peculiar than that which numbered 
Myles Standish as one of the One Hundred and Two 
of the Pilgrim Band. 

How came it as the fortune of that austere company 
of Separatists from the Church of England to whom 
the severity of rehgion was the chief of all concerns 
and worldliness the least of all matters; who proved it, 
first by long sufiFering at home, then by twelve years' 
self-banishment abroad at Leyden, and still more by 
their exodus through mountains of tribulation to the 
wilderness of America — how came it that, in their 
solemn departure on the strange Atlantic voyage, there 
joined them and went and stayed with them unto the 
end, a man, not of the church, not of the persecuted, 

18 



MYLES STANDISH 

not of the conscience-driven, but a blunt, doughty, 
rash, rough ranger, forsooth, "full of strange oaths 
and bearded like the pard," who however, by reason of 
his experience as a soldier, his comparative youth, his 
sufficiency of culture, the loyalty of his nature, the 
iron of his muscle and the headlong daring of his soul, 
united with singular self-poise, coolness and sagacity, 
was destined to be the shield of defence all through 
the cradling infancy of the Plymouth Colony? 

How such a character first came into favor with 
characters so opposite we are, save as there is ground 
for conjectiu-e and inference, without a ray of light. 
To the love of adventure, it would seem, characteris- 
tic of a man of his temperament, spirit and dash, 
added to a discontent born of his defeat as rightful 
heir to large ancestral estates, must we refer the event- 
ful circumstance of Standish joining the Pilgrims some 
time during their checquered stay at Leyden, and 
henceforth sharing, while so largely shaping, their 
fortunes. How long he was with them at Leyden, 
whether a year or but a day, we know not, nor what 
was his position there, — whether admitted to their 
confidence and taking part in the anxious counsels 
preceding the embarkation. Hardly less dim is our 
knowledge of his antecedent life. That he was born in 
Lancashire, England, about the year 1584 — that he 
was of the landed house of Standish, long in its line 
of ancestry — that during the fierce theological strife 
of the sixteenth century the family divided into Catho- 

19 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

lie and Protestant, the former taking the family style 
of "Standish Hall," and the latter, with whom was 
Myles, the style of "Duxbury Hall"; that his educa- 
tion had a military turn and he had a lieutenant's 
commission from Queen Elizabeth; that about the 
time of his majority he went to Holland and served in 
the Netherlands with the English forces against the 
cruel armies of the Inquisition, until at least the year 
1609, the year of the great truce between Prince Mau- 
rice and the King of Spain; and that from 1609 to 
1620, the hot period of dispute between the Arminians 
and Calvinists, he remained in the Low Countries and 
so perhaps there learned or unlearned much in the 
matter of religious opinion — these are things suffi- 
ciently certain to be treated as historical verities. 

Accordingly, when Standish stepped foot upon the 
deck of the Speedwell at Delfthaven, July 22, to touch 
once more, after the lapse of many years, his native 
shore of England at Southampton, there to join the 
Mayflower from London, and then, after the two in- 
effectual departures, the twice putting out and putting 
back, to leave at length the leaky vessel behind, he 
stepped finally aboard the Mayflower at Old Plymouth, 
as one of its one hundred and two passengers, "the 
seed which God had sifted three kingdoms to find," 
he was doubtless some thirty-six years old. Short of 
stature, but stout and stocky, he was in form and 
build of Napoleonic cast, while, like Menelaus of Ho- 
meric verse, he was a warrior of golden locks. Fair 

20 



MYLES STANDISH 

and beautiful, it is said, was Rose, his wife. Children 
they had none, and it does not appear that either man 
or woman was knit to the project of the voyage by 
any of those devout sentiments which inspired it. 

The voyage, if we count its time from the first sail- 
ing at Delfthaven (July 22) to the anchorage in Cape 
Cod Harbor, covered one hundred and eleven days; if 
from the final start at old Plymouth (September 6), 
after the two ineffectual starts at Southampton (Au- 
gust 5) and Dartmouth (August 21), sixty -six days. 
And what a voyage it was! In vain shall language 
seek to exaggerate. Search the annals of time, and 
where in all the schemes of colonization, the feats of 
exploration, the forays of conquest, or the hazards 
of forlorn hope, whether in Phoenician, Grecian or 
Roman story, or the thrilling chapters that carry you 
amid polar ice and darkness along with Franklin and 
Kane, or through Afric solitudes with Livingstone 
and Stanley, shall be found the equal of that unpre- 
tentious yet glorious passage and accomplishment of 
the Mayflower? Men, women and children, farewells 
on their lips to all and whatsoever there is in father- 
land, crowding into a ship thrice beyond its fair ca- 
pacity, a leaky, easy prey for the waves; mastered by 
a captain under bribe to be hostile to the venture; 
manned by a crew, coarse, profane, blasphemous, 
encountering "cross winds and fierce storms" that 
carry away sail, spar and shroud, and rack from place 
the main beam itself; sighs some heart, growing faint, 

21 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

for return? the great unbroken fortitude of the rest 

responds, 'press on, though roll the waves higher and 

higher, and more and more tosses the frail bark; 

on board, sea-sickness, disease, death, and casualties 

such as swept John Rowland fathoms into the deep to 

be rescued for a life of over fifty years and be among 

the very last of the survivors; at length the arrival, 

not at Northern Virginia, their intended destination, 

but, through treachery, at Cape Cod, 

"The sea around all black with storm. 
And white the shore with snow"; 

then the five dreary weeks of coasting with the shallop 
and exploring the sandy wastes of the Cape and the 
region round about in the face of the rigors of winter, 
the threats of the ship-master, the languishing of the 
sick, the failing of supplies and the hostilities of the 
barbarian, ere were found "a Harbour fit for ship- 
ping" and "a Land good for scituation," with "divers 
little running brooks" — such, such was the voyage! 

"In grateful adoration now 
Upon the barren sands they bow. 
What tongue of joy e'er woke such prayer 
As bursts in desolation there! 
What arm of strength e'er wrought such power 
As waits to crown that feeble hour!" 

But ere the Landing, — that day, the twenty-sec- 
ond or the twenty -first, we name the Landing, — 
thirty-odd days before the land-mark day of Plymouth 
Rock, behold, if the two be separable, a greater day. 
On the 11th of November, when the Mayflower had 

22 



MYLES STANDISH 

but well cast anchor, these Pilgrims, still all on board, 
for three months so buffeted by the waves and torn 
as by outrageous fortune, draw up and formally sign 
an instrument, a compact, which the mind of states- 
manship has ever since pronounced the very germ, the 
seminal principle itself of the American Constitution, 
whether of the State or the nation. So Webster held, 
so John Quincy Adams, so leading minds before and 
since the Great Expounder and the Old Man Eloquent. 
Says the latter, "This is perhaps, the first instance 
in human history of that positive, original, social 
compact which speculative philosophers have ima- 
gined as the only legitimate source of government." 
Or, to characterize it in the language of an eminent 
statesman not long ago departed. Senator Hoar, "the 
first written constitution that ever existed among 
men." 

You may say, indeed, that this majestic nation, 
in all the grandeur of its constitution and with all the 
possibilities of its future, two hundred and eighty -nine 
years ago, was rocked as a babe in the cradle of the 
Mayflower there on the deep, off or near the coast of 
Provincetown. 

The original draft of this extraordinary document, 
so drawn up and so signed, is not supposed to be in 
existence; but since the discovery in a grocer's shop 
at Halifax of Governor Bradford's Letter-Book, and 
later in 1855 of his manuscript history of the Plymouth 
Colony in the Fulham Library of London, now through 

23 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

the offices of the late Senator Hoar deposited in the 
State Ubrary at Boston, there, with open page in Brad- 
ford's hand-writing, to be seen through glass secure 
in its enclosure; and since too the original of the will 
of Peregrine White, whose birthplace was the cabin 
of the Mayflower, and who Uved to the advanced age 
of eighty-three, has within comparatively few years 
come to the surface, hopes are indulged that even the 
time-honored parchment of the Compact may yet be 
added to other preserved papers of the Pilgrim Fathers. 

Still another memorable day before reaching Ply- 
mouth Rock. "On the Sabboth day wee rested," 
saith the quaint Journal of the Pilgrims. That is, the 
company of them led by Myles Standish, who a few 
days before had set out in the shallop on the third ex- 
pedition to discover a goodly land and a safe harbor. 
They were fresh from the battle of "The First En- 
counter," having put to flight, under their brave 
leader, a small army of Indians who had ferociously 
attacked them. After the victory they took to the 
shallop, and a storm drove them to an island, now and 
ever since called Clark's Island from the name of the 
skilful skipper of the boat, where they passed Saturday 
toiling, repairing their shattered shallop, and Sunday 
worshiping. Juan Fernandez! St. Helena! Many are 
the isles of the sea that are famed and fascinating, 
but the devout Christian points to that islet of Ply- 
mouth Bay as surpassing them all. 

24 



MYLES STANDISH 

"Amid the storm they sang 

Till the stars heard and the sea. 
And the somiding aisles of the dim woods rang 
To the anthem of the free." 

To mark this isle with a monument some reverent 
men, Robert C. Winthrop and others, went thither 
years ago, borne in a revenue cutter of the United 
States, to select a site for the shaft. But as they stood 
on the isle and noted near its centre a massive ledge 
reaching down, down into the earth, they said, "Here 
is the monument already erected. Let us inscribe it." 
And in deep-set letters they chiseled thereon the sim- 
ple words : — 

"On the Sabboth day wee rested." 

Last summer [1908] I was at Plymouth and suc- 
ceeded, as I had not been able to do at any former 
visit there, succeeded not without considerable trouble 
in reaching the island; and there, on the western side 
of the great ledge, almost perpendicular for some fif- 
teen feet, the surface of that side about as smooth as 
rough board, clothed more or less with moss and 
shaded somewhat by wild wood, no culture of the soil 
anywhere round about, the scene natural as nature 
itself — there I distinctly beheld the unexampled in- 
scription: "On the Sabboth day wee rested, Decem- 
ber, 1620." And I rather wondered that in all the 
speeches of our Massachusetts legislators on the ob- 
servance of the Lord's Day, no one had ever thought 
to quote that silent but speechful line, thus chiseled 
on the lonely ledge, as the voice of the struggling 

25 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Pilgrims laying in the wilderness the corner stone of 
this august Republic. 

And now, having reached it, we may pause to stand 
on Plymouth Rock. As for two hundred and fifty and 
more years back, so even now the idea is more or 
less prevalent that the Rock is some manner of ledge 
extending down into the sea as part and parcel of the 
"stern and rock-bound coast." Whoever is not disa- 
bused of this notion before making his pilgrimage is 
doomed to a bewildering surprise or disappointment. 
First he will have to notice that, except in the poetic 
imagination of Mrs. Hemans, — the original manu- 
script of whose renowned poem, I may say, if you do 
not already know it, is now treasured in Pilgrim Hall, 
the gift of the late J. Thomas Field, who received it 
from the hand of its gifted author, — except in her fine 
imagination there is no "rock-bound coast" at all, 
but a long stretch of circular shore so free of rock that 
scarce will you find a sufficient stone to drive a hitch- 
ing-stake for a skiff. 

Next you are constrained to infer that the Pilgrim 
Rock is a far older pilgrim than the Pilgrims who im- 
mortalized it — a boulder wafted or heaved to its 
position by some mighty current or convulsion of a by- 
gone age. An exotic it is, a foreign substance, as much 
almost as would be a capstone of an Egyptian pyramid 
set down on the bank of yonder river. It is unlike any 
other stone or granite anywhere within known dis- 
tance. It is altogether rare in its hardness and fine- 

26 



MYLES STANDISH 

ness. It will polish smooth and glossy as any marble. 
No sledge-blow easily severs a piece from its ada- 
mantine side. It is singularly tenacious of its indi- 
viduality. A piece of the size of a small nutmeg costs 
half a dollar — did once. The price is said to be go- 
ing up every day. Indeed, I am told there is none 
now for sale in the home market, if anywhere else. I 
bought my stock in the old Rock, a half-dollar's worth, 
over twenty-five years ago, and all the whUe it has 
been paying better dividend than the Standard Oil 
or any other trust. 

And then the sight of it, the Rock, up and quite 
removed from the water's edge, stimulates inquiry till 
you have learned its interesting history from the time 
it began to attract attention. The story is too long to 
be here told. I commend it to you as one of rare inter- 
est. Time will only permit me to say that after vari- 
ous experiences imperiling at times its very existence, 
such as the chipping and thieving by relic-hunters, 
and after various heated controversies regarding its 
proper preservation, the Rock now lies quite remote 
from tide-water, owing to artificial extension for wharf 
purposes of the shore fine seaward; but very nearly, it 
is believed, where it lay at the time of the Landing, there 
securely enclosed by a granite structure under a canopy 
supported by four pillars resting on a stone-work that 
covers all but a small upper section of the old boulder. 
You step under the canopy and step up upon a few square 
feet of the Rock's natural, unchipped, time-colored 

27 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

surface, once touched, forsooth, by the Mayflower feet 
of John Alden and Priscilla Mullens. There standing, 
the monument to the Forefathers looking down on you 
from yonder height, its arm of faith uplifted to the 
heavens, your foot-rest the same whereon stepped 
perchance one after another the disembarking ad- 
venturers when the breaking waves dashed on the soli- 
tary shore — so standing peradventure you may be 
moved to recite aloud to the outlying bay, or in mur- 
mur to yourself, those commemorative lines of a cer- 
tain anonymous pilgrim to the shrine. 

"Thou stern old Rock, in the ages past 
Thy brow was bleached by the warring blast; 
But thy wintry toil with the waves is o'er 
And the billows beat thy base no more; 
Yet countless as thy sands, old Rock, 
Are the hardy sons of the Pilgrim stock; 
The tree they reared in the days gone by. 
It lives, it lives and ne'er shall die." 

Following the labor of the Landing came the labor 
of the Pilgrims in building the rude log houses they 
hastened to build for shelter of themselves and their 
effects. Having laid out their first street, now and 
always known as Leyden Street, with lots assigned 
thereon, a diagram of which, drawn by Bradford, is 
to be seen in the Registry of Deeds at Plymouth, and 
having built their common stone-house, they were 
proceeding with as much dispatch as weather and 
sickness would permit to build the first seven dwell- 
ings, when they paused a day, Saturday the 17th of 

28 



MYLES STANDISH 

February, 1621, and, to use the words of the Journal: 
"We called a meeting for the establishing of military- 
orders among ourselves and we chose Myles Standish 
our Captaine and gave him authoritie of command in 
our affayers." 

Such is the record. There you have the conceded 
origin of the New England Town Meeting — the exact 
starting point of that elemental force so powerful in 
educating and rousing the Colonies to the Declaration 
of Independence, and which ever since the Revolu- 
tion has been the chief pillar of support to Constitu- 
tional Government: the New England Town Meeting, 
from which De Tocqueville deduces the whole fabric 
of the civil liberty of the United States. 

"We chose Myles Standish our Captaine." But 
there were other articles in the warrant. While acting 
on them an Indian warwhoop provoked a speedy mo- 
tion to adjourn, and before the warrant was disposed 
of there were other adjournments for similar cause; 
but finally, on the 23rd of March, the business was 
finished by passing divers orders " behoof efull for their 
present estate," and by choosing John Carver Governor 
for the ensuing year, he having been elected for the 
short term aboard the Mayflower. 

And it is a singular fact that, as the election of Myles 
Standish as captain was the first formal act of the Pil- 
grims in town meeting assembled, so the first crime of 
which they took legal cognizance was the offence of 
John Billington for "his contempt of Captain Stand- 

29 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

ish's lawful command." John Billington was the scape- 
grace of the colony, a wretch who, it is said, was " shuf- 
fled in" by some unaccountable trickery at London. 
Governor Bradford in 1624 declared he was "a knave 
and so will live and die." And so he did, for in 1630 he 
was condemned for the murder of a brother Pilgrim. 
Staining the soil of New England with the jfirst mur- 
der, he has been styled the Cain of the Eden of the 
New World. This Billington was the father of the boy, 
Francis Billington, who descried "from the top of a 
hie tree a great sea as he thought" — the same being 
the large pond two or three miles from Plymouth vil- 
lage, which has been called and mapped as " Billington 
Sea" unto this day. 

We should observe in passing that as the Town Meet- 
ing originated with the Pilgrims in their first year at 
Plymouth, so did the Thanksgiving, and a year or two 
later the Fast Day, and about the same time that favor- 
ite, darling exhibit of industrial Yankeedom, the Cattle 
Show. A show it was of one hull and three heifers. It 
was a Puritan cattle show — no horse race, no baseball, 
no razor-strop man or any other fakirs. I venture the 
remark that at no cattle show since have Jerseys, Dur- 
hams, Holsteins, Ayrshires or any other breeds been 
so looked over and stared at as were those four quad- 
rupeds, the first cattle imported to the western world. 

Be it remembered that, whatever the disposition 
and designs of other early settlers upon American soil, 
the mission of the Pilgrims was peace and good-will 

30 



MYLES STANDISH 

to man — the red man not less than the white. What- 
ever the religious intolerance of other settlers, theirs 
was of a type far milder; and with whatever assump- 
tion others asserted claims to territory, theirs was a 
punctilious observance of aboriginal rights. 

Upon their arrival they knew nothing of the Indian 
language, and for a dreary while were without an in- 
terpreter through whom they could communicate a 
syllable of their friendly aims and ends. In their first 
explorations, though clad in coats of mail and armed 
to the teeth, their motive was but that of self-defence. 
They followed the Indian trails and sought out hut and 
wigwam, as bearing not the sword, but the olive 
branch; and in the famous "First Encounter," when 
Standish with a handful of men plucked victory from 
the very barbs of unnumbered arrows, the warfare on 
their part was purely defensive. They desired only 
to "truck," trade with the natives, and God helping, 
convert them; but as they could make known their de- 
sire only through the enigma of signs, the untutored 
savage beheld the panoply of their armor and heard 
the awful sound of their musketry, and muttered, 
" this means not peace but war ! " For three months the 
red man had kept distrustfully distant from the new 
settlement, all his manifestations were hostile, and no 
word had been exchanged between him and the pale 
face. But lo! how 

"God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform." 
31 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

On the morning of the 16th of March, as the trou- 
bled settlers were in a consultation over their affairs, 
and otherwise busy, every man, and woman as well, 
with one eye on work and the other on the look-out, 
there came slipping into the little hamlet, along down 
that first street of civilization, alone, but with a con- 
fident carriage, peering curiously about as he passed 
the rude log dwellings with their windows of oiled paper, 
a tall, straight, near naked, stalwart Indian, exclaim- 
ing in broken English, " Welcome, Welcome, English- 
men!" 

It was Samoset. Astonished more than pleased at 
the appearance of the visitor, the settlers with favor 
received and fed him, and through the imperfect speech 
he had caught from English fishermen who aforetime 
had touched thereabouts, they learned various im- 
portant things : — that the name of their locality was 
Patuxet — that four years before a plague had swept 
the whole region and nearly depopulated it — that the 
Massasoits were the tribe nearest to them and the 
Nausites the next — that the latter were the tribe they 
fought in the "First Encounter"; lastly, that all the In- 
dians were greatly incensed against the white men by 
reason of one Hunt, a ship-master who, "under color 
of trucking with them," a few years before, had bar- 
barously captured twenty-six Indians, carried them 
to Spain, and sold them into slavery at twenty pounds 
per captive. 

Near all day the settlers held discourse with Samo- 
32 



MYLES STANDISH 

set and then dismissed him with presents that made 
him glad. Presently he came again and brought five 
other Indians, who were well treated and sent away 
pleased. Then in about a week came Samoset, and 
with him another savage, world-wide known his name 

— Squantum or Squanto ! the sole survivor of the pesti- 
lence-destroyed Patuxets — sole survivor because one 
of the twenty-six captives sold into Spanish slavery, 
who, however, escaping to England, was there hu- 
manely supported a while by good John Slaney, being 
apt of tongue, learned the English language, and then 
was sent back to his native shore, not designedly in- 
deed, to be the interpreter and mediator between the 
Pilgrims and the Massasoits; but who, through strange 
experience, educated for the good office, filled it ; — 
and so out of the wrath of the barbarous Hunt came 
the praise at last — the Pilgrim Treaty with King 
Massasoit, offensive and defensive, religiously kept 
on both sides for over fifty years ! 

Go now to the scene at Plymouth of that far-reach- 
ing negotiation. Changed, all changed is it, but the 
two Hills still look down upon the Bay — the one 
where grouped the white men, the other where camped 
the red; this then topped with forest, now thick with 
the dusky, crumbling tomb-stones of the Forefathers, 

— Bradford's, Cushman's, Howland's, Grey's and 
the rest; that then wild with woods, now clustered 
with cottages over whose prosperous inmates oft floats 

33 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

from the surmounting flag-staff the Star-Spangled 
Banner; between them (the hills) the stream that then 
leaped untrammeled to the sea and by whose side bub- 
bled the Spring, to Pilgrim sense the sweetest of all 
waters, now is bridged, bridled and beset with mills and 
all the transforming arts of manufacture. Neverthe- 
less, though we read the historic page through the 
mist of near three centuries, a draft from that Pilgrim 
Spring, its waters to-day pure as of old, seems like 
some enabling elixir to bring the scene of the Treaty 
and the actors all vividly to view. Please bear in mind, 
my friends, that the picture is not my invention, save 
as I dip pen in the ink of the record and endeavor to 
paint the action as seen all around us to-day in State, 
school, church, family, farm, factory, and the fashion 
of New England civilization now spread to the far- 
off shores of the Pacific. 

Here behold good, stern Governor Carver, with his 
few wise counsellors about him, and all on that side 
braced in self-reliance by the dauntless httle man. 
Captain Myles Standish. Yonder see the great Saga- 
more Massasoit, " a very lusty man, of grave counte- 
nance and spare of speech," about his neck a huge chain 
of white bone beads, his head and face oiled, his royal 
apparel the beautiful skins of wild beasts, his ample 
body-guard a train of sixty select savages, armed, 
painted, plumed, skin-clad, and trinket-decked. Each 
side fearing the other, the parley is slow to begin. Dis- 

34 



MYLES STANDISH 

trustful glances gleam from side to side. Slyly the si- 
lence breaks through Squantum, who goes back and 
forth alone over the brook between the Hills. Pre- 
sently the ready but discreet Winslow is dispatched 
to the Indian camp, bearing presents to the King and 
his brother Quadequina — "Knives, a copper chain 
with a jewel, biscuits and butter and a pot of strong 
water." The King is pleased, and leaving Winslow 
behind for a hostage in the hands of Quadequina, ad- 
vances, followed by twenty men minus bows and ar- 
rows. Then goes out and down the hill to meet him 
at the stream Captain Standish at the head of six 
mail-coated musketeers. Met, the Captain salutes the 
King and the King the Captain; and thereupon, with 
as much pomp and circumstance as circumstances per- 
mit, the commander-in-chief of the colonial forces 
escorts his Majesty to a log hut, forsooth, the undomed 
Capitol of the infant State, where for show and impres- 
sion's sake have been spread a green carpet, divers 
cushions, and the like. The King arrived, the drum and 
trumpet strike up, and gravely approaches the Gov- 
ernor, with such musketeers as can be mustered march- 
ing after him. The rulers meet, the Governor kisses 
the King's hand and the King the Governor's, and 
they sit down. Some "strong water" is brought, and 
the Governor drinking to his Majesty's health, his 
Majesty drinks to the Governor's "a great draught," 
and of the fresh meat served "the King did eat 
wiUingly and did urge his followers." Then opens in 

35 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

earnest the memorable parley, ending in the great 
Treaty whose six articles were so long and sacredly 
observed. 

Yet was this notable feat of diplomacy planned and 
consummated in the very midst of the deepest of Pil- 
grim distresses and sorrows. Added to the inroads 
upon health, consequent on the hard voyage, were the 
climatic changes and all the nameless exposures in- 
cident to the labor of the landing, the exploring, the 
building, and the watching night and day of the en- 
emy. Fearful diseases set in — fever, scurvy and the 
wasting blight of quick consumption. Six died in De- 
cember, eight in January, seventeen in February, thir- 
teen in March — in all forty-four ! Thus on April 5th, 
at the sailing of the Mayflower homeward to Old Eng- 
land, of the one hundred and two who came in her, 
reckoning the death aboard ship, but fifty-seven 
survived. Yet was there no Pilgrim who, dismayed, 
willed to return. In this harvest of death, lest the 
savages should discern their waning numbers, their 
growing weakness, the living felt constrained to bury 
the dead in the darkness of night and then to level 
with the sod and leave unmarked the graves. There 
by the lonely shore, no requiem but the waves, un- 
coflSned and unsung, with a faith sublime, but oh! 
how sadly, they consigned the dear dust to the dust of 
the bleak foreign coast. The scene! even the fervid 
conception of Coleridge fails to image it. " Melancholy, 
yea, dismal, yet consolatory and full of joy; a scene 

36 



MYLES STANDISH . , 

even better fitted to exalt, to lead the forlorn hopes of 
all great causes till time shall be no more." 

Throughout this unspeakable dispensation none was 
more assiduous and delicate in ministering to the sick 
than Myles Standish. As early as January the hand of 
death had laid low his beloved wife. He, while brav- 
ing most the arrows of the Indian, seemed ever fore- 
most in facing the shafts of the great Archer of all. 
Constant, unwearied, gentle, he went from rude cot to 
rude cot, performing all the heavier offices of man and 
the more exquisite of the nurse. When at one time all 
but seven of the remaining Pilgrim band were help- 
lessly prostrate, he who was chief of heroes in the ad- 
ventures of the forest, proved chief of the Samaritans 
in the hospitals of the sick. Brave, rough warrior that 
he was, he had in him the angel tenderness of a Flor- 
ence Nightingale! 

I pass over several notable instances of the cap- 
tain's courage, tact and genius, and for brevity's sake 
omit the particulars of that, his incredible exploit so 
celebrated by Longfellow, his slaying single-handed 
the powerful leader-in-chief of that tribal conspiracy 
formed for the extinction of the Weston colony at 
Wessagusset, now Weymouth, and the Plymouth col- 
ony besides — his daring deed in rushing upon the 
gigantic Pecksuot, seizing from him his knife and plung- 
ing it with fatal stroke into his heart, thus dismaying 
his followers and ultimately dispersing his army and 
rescuing from impending destruction the two strug- 

37 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

gling colonies — one of the most daring feats of valor 
ever dared by warrior, and one of the most decisive 
battles in all warfare, though small the number of com- 
batants and slight the bloodshed, because on the issue 
thereof the fate of the Plymouth colony did verily 
seem to hang, and thereby did hang so great a tale for 
the pen of history and the inspiration of mankind. 

It did infinite credit to the heart of dear old pastor 
Robinson far over the wave at Leyden, who, when he 
heard of the prowess of the Plymouth captain and the 
slaughter, while he joyed in the event, could not but 
exclaim, "Oh, how happy a thing it would have been 
had you converted some before you killed any!" 

Odd enough that this character, so mighty in war, 
weighty in council, yoked to business, and void of the 
stuff that dreams are made of, should have touched 
that austere. Puritanic congregation with its principal 
streak of romance. Curious contrariety of preaching 
and practice, that he who blazoned his rule, — if you 
would have a thing done well do it yourself — should, 
when he would propose his love to Priscilla, depute 
the young, the handsome, the engaging John Alden 
to make the proposal — with what shipwreck of af- 
fection on the Captain's part, with what course of true 
love to run smooth on John's, the world all knows. 

But, though Priscilla could charm the Captain into 
breaking his favorite rule of action, she was not equal 
to the breaking of his heart. Nay, it may be said that 

38 



MYLES STANDISH 

as usual he came off hero. For not only did he alto- 
gether forgive John Alden the atrocious offence of 
outshining him in the maiden heart of Priscilla Mullens, 
but when the twain were wed he magnanimously re- 
marked : — 

" Never so much as now was Myles Standish the friend of John 
Alden," 

and straightway he bestowed his affection, not in vain, 
upon another fair maid who came to him in the good 
ship Ann, Venus-like out of the sea, to fill well the wifely 
oflSce of his lamented Rose. But I am not about to tell 
my fair hearers in prose the tale they are so familiar 
with in verse. I take great pleasure, however, in reassur- 
ing them that the incidents have a groundwork of fact 
in some of the old books; and one of the cleverest of 
American poets has, to be sure, rounded them into 
proportions of romantic beauty for the generations to 
come. 

From the "courtship of Myles Standish," in point 
of time the earliest known on Columbia's shore of Pil- 
grim passions the tender, I pass to the war-worn Pil- 
grim himself, grown old to three-score and ten, weary 
of the harness and ready for the farewell. Long since 
he has settled on the farm allotted to him for great 
service done — his one hundred and fifty acres within 
the town called Duxbury, from Duxbury Hall of the 
house of Standish. Contemplate him there, as with 
tremulous hand he draws his last testament, appor- 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

tioning his little estate in the New World and devising 
to his son, Alexander, his title to the great one of his 
ancestors in the Old, whereof he the rightful heir, saith 
the Will, was "surreptitiously detained." 

Go with him as, feeble of step, he ascends for the 
last time the bold hill of his name, to sweep with 
dimmed eye the Harbor of the Pilgrims and the fa- 
miliar landscape around Plymouth Rock. View him 
borne now, in the final sleep, from his rude mansion 
on the bluff to the spot of his resting, unmarked, un- 
found, unknown forever! Like the date of his birth, 
like the date of his wedlock the first and the second, 
like the date of his death, the grave of Standish, what- 
ever may be said to the contrary, is a place unknown. 
While these and other facts we pursue elude research, 
how few also are the relics by which we touch, as it 
were, the garments of this man of the Mayflower. Of 
his books, some forty, none; of his private papers, no 
scrap; of his apparel, no shred; of his household effects, 
a kettle and a pewter dish; of the house he built, burned 
after his demise, no remnant but the scattered stones 
of the foundation, the site still visible of the door- 
yard spring, and a charred timber or two wrought into 
the house of his son, Alexander, now standing in the 
old neighborhood since 1666; of his equipments of war, 
the cutlass preserved in the Rooms at Boston and the 
ancient sword at Pilgrim Hall — the "Damascus 
blade," which served him in Flanders, served him in 
the battles of the wilderness and served we know not 

40 



MYLES STANDISH 

how many of his warhke ancestors before him. The 
Sword of Myles Standish! Scarcely has man left relic 
behind to excite such interest and stimulate such in- 
quiry as this mysterious blade. Longfellow sings of 
it as 

" his trusty sword of Damascus, 

Curved at the point and inscribed with its mystical Arabic sen- 
tence." 

Much attention have antiquarians and scientists 
given it, to determine, if possible, the place of its man- 
ufacture and decipher its hieroglyphic inscriptions. 
To this end some years ago a facsimile of the sword 
was taken and sent to Gottingen, Germany, where 
it was submitted to the inspection of various distin- 
guished scientists, but to no purpose. It is a long, am- 
ple blade, curved and fluted, and in the midst of the 
inscriptions upon one of its sides are distinctly trace- 
able the figures, "1149." Eleven hundred and forty- 
nine! Seven hundred and fifty and more years old, 
perchance! Forged, turned, tempered near a half- 
thousand years before the embarkation at Delft- 
haven, in what wars may it not have been? or flashing 
its steel in however few or none, what wars and rumors 
of war shook the continents while this blade may have 
laid in its scabbard, awaiting a mission greater, I haz- 
ard, than that of the sword of a Cortez, a Coeur de 
Lion or the Maid of Orleans ! More potent in ultimate 
beneficent result than all the martial array of the 
Crusades, than all the blood-drenching Wars of the 

41 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Roses, than all the bristling legions and thunder- 
striking Armadas of Philip of Spain, was the army of 
never more than fifty men, who followed the lead of 
the spunky little Captain whose sabre is this memento 
of the Pilgrims! 

"In marshaling the degrees of sovereign honor," says 
Lord Bacon, "place first the founders of States and 
commonwealths, conditores imperiorum, such as Romu- 
lus, Cyrus, Othman, Ismael." But as weighing honors 
in the balances, with the streaming light of the centu- 
ries to tone and temper the soul of judgment, write 
out the full-measured share of Standish in founding 
the great Repubhc of Washington, and over the clas- 
sic-sung name of the founder of imperial Rome, above 
that of the mighty prophet-told monarch of the Medes 
and Persians, higher than that of the conqueror from 
whose triumph sprang the resplendent dynasty of the 
Ottoman Empire, and higher still than that which 
inspires with veneration the hearts of many an Orien- 
tal million, shall you write the far less heralded but 
more grandly significant name of the Defender of the 
little Plymouth Colony. 

Appropriate as aught of commemorative art in the 
olden time or recent, that there upon the Hill which 
was the home of his choice, from whose summit, on 
a day of bright sky, the eye takes in the long line of 
sea that tossed the Mayflower, the out-reaching arm 
of the Cape whose sandy shores the voyage-worn 
Pilgrims first descried, and under whose shelter they 

42 



MYLES STANDISH 

first dropped anchor; and circling round, rests upon 
the field of the First Encounter, the Island of the 
First Sabbath and anon, upon the upland, still sloping 
to the Bay, where sleep the ashes of the departed, and 
below, in its accustomed bed near the lap of the tide, 
lies the old Rock of the Landing — appropriate that 
there upon that commanding Mount should rise the 
ample granite shaft, the memorial of enduring monu- 
ment, capped and impersonated with the statue of 
Myles Standish. 



THE AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKE- 
SPEARE^ 

Who wrote Shakespeare? Who was, or to use a bet- 
ter tense, is the author of those remarkable productions 
commonly reputed to be the works of William Shake- 
speare? It is a matter of transcendent interest to the 
literary world. True it is that some rather flippantly 
say, it is enough that we have the works, and no mat- 
ter who wrote them. Ah! but human curiosity says, 
't is matter. 

Who was the architect that designed the Parthenon 
or the Coliseum? Who the sculptor that chiseled a 
Venus de Melos or the Dying Gladiator? Who the 
artist that painted some anonymous masterpiece that 
holds the gaze of admiring art? Under what conditions 
of mechanical genius sprang the marvelous contrivance 
that lifted to the clouds the huge capstones of the 
Pyramids and set them in their places? Whither has 

' The above lecture was first given at the University Club in 
Boston before the Verulam Society of Boston, a society organized 
for the purpose of promoting investigation of the authorship of the 
productions familiarly known as the Plays of Shakespeare. In many 
subsequent deliveries of it the author has observed no reason for 
making any changes therein as to matters of fact or otherwise, ex- 
cept as he has found increasing cause to emphasize his statements 
and the argument by a more forcible diction. Very nearly as here 
published the lecture was given before the Shakespeare Club of 
Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905. 

44 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

gone that variety of mortal ingenuity which so used 
to excite our wonderment as we hstened with rapt at- 
tention to the lecture of Wendell Philips on "The Lost 
Arts"? These are questions that still cry for answer, 
though the cry of ages has been vain. The sight of a 
great creation, whether the world itself or great things 
therein, irresistibly incites inquiry into the origin 
thereof; so prone is the human mind to trace the source 
of whatever captivates the sense or reason. It is not 
enough to behold the mountains and the ocean and the 
stars, and say, "the hand that made them is divine." 
We would somehow see and touch the hand in its 
power and cunning, what though the voice of Holy 
Writ be, "Who by searching shall find out the 
Almighty?" 

So whenever the authorship of any considerable book 
is in dispute, litterateurs are never inclined to drop 
discussion of the question till it be settled. Much less 
are they likely to cease agitation of the subject so long 
as such dispute relates to a book which, as compared 
with all others known to Christian civilization, unless 
it be the Bible, holds the highest and securest place 
in the realm of letters. . 

The authorship of this wonderful book, comprehend- 
ing the Plays and the Sonnets, so universally reputed 
for two hundred and more years to be the productions 
of Shakespeare, is in controversy. However hard or 
painful for us it may be to relinquish the idea, part and 
parcel as it has been of our education and faith from 

45 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

childhood, that the glory of Hamlet, Macbeth, King 
Lear, Othello, perhaps, says Macaulay, the greatest 
work in the world, Romeo and Juliet, and all the 
rest belongs to him whom we have lovingly styled 
"the sweet bard of Avon," it is certain that there 
are many men and women of learning, character 
and high reputation, who believe that the idea is ab- 
solutely without any foundation in fact. 

The books taking such view, in America, Great 
Britain and Germany, now number hundreds of vol- 
umes, some of which are replete with learning and 
cope in intellectual force with anything to be found 
on library shelves in the field of literary research and 
discussion; and what is very, very noticeable, they 
are all in the good-tempered spirit of inquiry after 
truth, very unlike, it must be conceded, very unlike 
the impatient and evasive publications in reply. 

Some of us, probably most of us here to-night, will 
not live long enough to see fully accepted this view of 
the heretics; but when it is considered how the heresy 
has grown and spread in the last forty-five or fifty years, 
it is hardly rash to suspect that it may be a matter of 
some wonderment with the next generation how we 
could so cling to our cherished idea in the face and eyes 
of the mountainous improbabilities of its correctness, 
not to speak of the large variety of adverse evidence 
approaching the positive itself in character. 

It is to be observed that not till a time compara- 
tively recent was Shakespeare a well-known book in 

46 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

the sense of its being popularly known and admired. 
Except as it was here and there read and appreciated 
by a poet or other writer, it was for nearly two hun- 
dred years in general disregard. With such rare ex- 
ceptions the representatives of literature derided and 
rejected it as altogether dispensable, if not unworthy 
a place in any well-ordered library. In all the interval 
of near two centuries from 1598, when the Plays ceased 
to be anonymous, Ben Jonson, Pope, Milton, and 
others are about the only conspicuous writers who 
appear to have recognized them as the work of genius. 
Dryden, with some qualifications, derided them as "in- 
coherent stories meanly written." They were in gen- 
eral disfavor. The drift and degree of this aversion 
are perceivable if we take note of the animus of our 
forefathers of the American Colonies. Embracing 
many of the most cultivated minds, how few, if any,, 
of them would have had Shakespeare in their libraries 
more than Voltaire or Paine's "Age of Reason," if the 
latter had then been written? As late as 1820, we are 
told by Josiah Quincy that it was whispered among 
the students of Phillips Academy at Andover, as a 
startling fact, that a professor of the theological sem- 
inary there had a copy of Shakespeare among his books ! 
I myself remember what a disturbance it was to my 
mother's mind when she discovered that one of my 
older brothers and my oldest sister were reading 
Shakespeare ! 

It thus appears that chiefly within the last seventy- 
47 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

five or eighty years has the book grown into public, 
popular favor. Prior to that period it was mostly read, 
where read at all, in secret or out of some curiosity. 
This non-recognition of it was due in part to the adverse 
criticisms it suffered during the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries, and in part to the prevailing preju- 
dice against theatrical plays. The theatre was not 
deemed respectable in Shakespeare's time, nor for 
generations afterward. Julia Ward Howe in her remi- 
niscences {Atlantic Monthly, December, 1898) speaks 
of her remembrance of the destruction by fire of the 
first Bowery Theatre in New York, and remarks that 
it was regarded as "a judgment" upon the wickedness 
of the stage and its patrons. While the book was un- 
recognized as one of surpassing merit, nobody deemed 
it worth while to inquire much into its authorship. 
But no sooner had it taken commanding rank than 
scholars began to ask, who was Shakespeare that he 
should have produced this prodigious book, eclipsing 
everything that had gone before, or since has appeared, 
in variety, power, pathos, penetration, and in uni- 
versality of knowledge? Who was he.^* Accordingly as 
we find a rational answer to the question must we find 
whether William Shakespeare was or was not the au- 
thor of the Plays bearing his name. 

The first real doubt of record concerning the author- 
ship was doubtless launched by Lord Byron in 1821. 
In 1837 the flame of it was fanned by the Earl of Bea- 
consfield in his " Venetia." In 1848 Joseph C. Hart, a 

48 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

lawyer of New York and of the literary coterie there 
in the time of Irving, was the next notable agitator of 
the question. Following him, among others, a contrib- 
utor to Chambers' Edinburgh Journal in 1852 touched 
on the subject. Then out of much research and equal 
ability and trial of soul, courage to dare the wrath of 
nettled traditionalism — a courage too dauntless to 
quail before the scoffs of Carlyle and a haughty host 
of other scoffers, Delia Bacon advanced and main- 
tained the Baconian theory. So maintained it that 
Emerson was moved to say, "Miss Bacon has opened 
the subject so that it can never be closed." The 
fortitude of that lonely spirit in her wanderings and 
solitudes at home and abroad, while forging, as she 
believed, the thunderbolt to blast a bloated tradition, 
is worthy the heroism of any of the martyr saints 
since the time of him who spake as never man spake. 

Doubt is said to be the key of knowledge. The doubt 
of Columbus discovered this hemisphere. It rather 
looks as if it might prove the key to this most singular 
of all literary problems; for the doubt of Byron in 1821 
has so grown and developed in intelligence and confi- 
dence that it now amounts to positive conviction 
on the part of a large representative body of the lit- 
erary world that, whether Francis Bacon was or was 
not, it is certain that William Shakespeare was not the 
author of "Hamlet" and those other glories of dra- 
matic poetry that so command universal admiration. 

What now in brief is the argument to disprove 
49 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Shakespeare the author and in support of the Baco- 
nian theory? First and foremost is the improbability 
that he was the author — an improbabihty so strong 
that in the Hght of common reason it falls little, 
if at all, short of Impossibility. Shakespeare, unless 
you assume the authorship to be his, was an illiterate. 
He was of an illiterate family. Both his father and mo- 
ther made their signatures with a cross. His two daugh- 
ters, — Judith, at the age of twenty-seven could not 
write her name, and Susanna, who married a doctor, 
could not read her husband's handwriting. The family 
had no settled way of spelling their name. More than 
thirty different forms have been found among their 
papers, on their tombstones and in contemporaneous 
public records. How William himself spelt it nobody 
can quite say. His signature is illegible and so various 
in scrawl as to be little better than hieroglyphics. The 
three signatures to his will, so far as discoverable, were 
written difiPerently each time. Nor is his signature 
illegible only. It bears the unmistakable marks of 
uncultivation. Many a cultivated person writes his 
or her name poorly, but however poorly, we can see 
that the subscriber is used to the pen; as witness the 
signature of that great magician who used so to elec- 
trify the courts of Boston and the Commonwealth, 
Rufus Choate, who with his own restless hand per- 
haps wrote more pages of notes of evidence than any 
lawyer before him or since; of Talleyrand; of Nathan- 
iel Bowditch; of Queen Victoria; some of you may 

50 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

have seen her official autograph, Victoria, as dashed off 
times without number. The facile pen is artistic in its 
irregularities. 

We have five specimens in facsimile of Shakespeare's 
autograph in five signatures to legal papers; and ex- 
cept as you detect something like William in two, pos- 
sibly three of them, you are all at sea in making out 
what William was trying to do. There is the stiff, me- 
chanical groping of painful uncertainty in the trail of 
his quill. Daniel Webster, who in very early manhood 
was for a while a scribe or copyist in a registry of deeds, 
said that his hand never recovered from the cramp 
incurred in that service. You would think that Shake- 
speare could never have recovered from the agony of a 
single signature. Yet the editorial comment on the 
manuscript of the Plays in the preface of the Folio 
Edition of 1623, is in these words : — 

"His mind and hand went together, and what he 
thought he uttered (wrote) with that easiness that we 
have scarce received from him a blot in his papers"; 
a comment that might well apply to the manuscript 
of Bacon, who wrote with exceeding legibility and 
wrote his manuscript over and over before submitting 
it to the printer. 

Shakespeare died in 1616 — seven years before the 
publication of the Folio Edition which first grouped 
the Plays substantially as we now have them. Who 
prepared the edition for the press.? In his will, made 
the same year of his death, there is not a syllable 

51 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

to Indicate that the reputed author had or ever had 
any literary property: not the mention of a book, 
much less of a library, nor of a manuscript, though 
such choice dramas as "Macbeth," "The Tempest," 
and "Julius Csesar" were then unpublished. Where 
were the manuscripts of them then sleeping? Where 
in the seven long years did they slumber? Who had 
them in possession? Who should have had them in 
possession, actual or constructive, but the author 
thereof? Who better knew their priceless worth than 
the master intellect that wrought the deathless verse? 
Is it possible that the human being who created those 
dramas and wrote out the whole pile of manuscript 
without a blot could have made his last testament, 
inventorying his estate in much detail, as he did, and 
not even allude to the treasure? 

But more of the will later on. Just now as to the 
testator's education. He was born without doubt in 
1564. It would appear that he went to London some- 
time between 1585 and 1587, and if so, he was then 
from twenty-one to twenty-three years old. Before 
he went, there is no evidence that he went to any school. 
Stratford was a small place where there was a small 
grammar school, so-called, in which, according to Dr. 
Morgan, there was "no such branch as grammar and 
mighty little of anything in its place, but birchen rods, 
the church catechism, the cris-cross row and a few su- 
perfluous Latin declensions out of Lily's Accidence." 
We may infer that William attended this school more or 

5% 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

less. If he did, and if he was an apt scholar, the chances 
were against him for more than a meagre culture. 
Throughout his minority he was in an atmosphere the 
very reverse of literary; in a town a few only of whose 
inhabitants could read or write, including its officials 
some of whom could do neither, and where it is esti- 
mated (by Grant White) that there were, outside the 
school and the church, not more than a half dozen books 
all told. The town in which he was born and bred, 
David Garrick as late as 1769, one hundred and fifty- 
three years after Shakespeare's death, when Stratford, 
like most other English towns, must have grown in 
comeliness — as late as that, Garrick, the famous actor, 
pronounced it "the most dirty, unseemly, ill-paved 
and wretched-looking in all Britain." 

Of affirmative evidence there is not a particle that 
he went to London equipped with any book education 
at all, while the inference is that whatever he had ac- 
quired of it was very slight. The tradition is that, 
while apprenticed to a butcher, he got into a fracas by 
poaching in a deer park, and to escape consequences 
ran or strolled away to London, leaving his wife and 
children behind, having married at eighteen a girl of 
whom nothing is known save that she was eight years 
his senior, and that he was licensed to marry her as 
one Anne Hathaway, November 27, 1582. 

Arrived in London he became sooner or later a play- 
actor, never one of note, and in time the proprietor or 
a co-proprietor or the manager or a co-manager of one, 

53 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

possibly two theatres — rude, pen-like structures on 
the ruffian, cut-throat side of the river Thames, un- 
protected against the weather, save as thatched roofs 
sheltered mainly the stage — patronized mostly, but 
most liberally patronized by the riff-raff of London and 
the suburbs. He had a tact for the business aod made 
money, amassed a considerable fortune, even as the 
late John Stetson of Boston did in a like business in 
these more enlightened times, though himself little 
other than an illiterate. He was in London about 
twenty-five years, some say not more than twenty. 
During this time, besides playing on the stage and 
managing his rough-and-tumble business, he wrote, 
if he wrote them, thirty-six or thirty-seven dramas, 
one hundred and fifty -four sonnets, and one or two or 
three minor poems. That is, made, if he made it, the 
mightiest book of Christendom, save, if you please, 
the Scriptures. 

Cotemporaneous with him were such eminent coun- 
trymen, literary and political, as Raleigh, Sydney, 
Spenser, Bacon, Cecil, Coke, Camden, Hooker, Drake, 
Hobbs, Laud, Pym, Hampden, Selden, Walton and 
others; yet there is not k scintilla of evidence that he 
was known to either of these men or to any others of 
less note among the statesmen, scholars, soldiers and 
artists of his day, except a few of his fellow-craftsmen 
(R. G. White). The prose works of the latter part of 
the sixteenth and early part of the seventeenth century 
contain abundant notices of every poet of distinction, 

54 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare alone excepted. "Since the constellation 
of great men who appeared in Greece in the time of 
Pericles," says Emerson, "there was never any such 
society, yet their genius failed them to find out the best 
head in the universe." 

In 1610 or thereabouts Shakespeare left London and 
passed the remainder of his days in Stratford, his na- 
tive town — what doing? loaning money and, it would 
seem, brewing beer, the unimpeachable record showing 
that he brought suit to recover the price of a quantity 
of malt sold which, in these days would be equivalent 
to about twenty barrels of Jones's ale, delivered to one 
person in two months. The sweet bard of Avon — like 
the late potentate of Portsmouth — possibly was in 
the wholesale business. A phase perchance of that 
"dignified retirement" they celebrate. 

A litigious man he was and penurious, in one instance 
suing for an item of two shillings loaned. Little kind- 
ness he had for the poor. A movement to enclose the 
town commons he secretly favored against the protest 
of the town authorities that it would be a grievance to 
the poor people. He did, however, give ten pounds 
to the poor in his will, but his biographers are not apt 
to mention it. 

Not a vestige of personal proof have we that he ever 
wrote a line of verse or prose. 'T is otherwise with 
Petrarch, Dante, and others who lived and wrote long 
before his time. No manuscript or document or in- 
strument or composition of any kind in his hand- 

55 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

writing has come down to us, not even a letter, and 
one letter only addressed to him and that was for a 
loan of money. Almost to no purpose has been the 
search of generations for a solitary scrap of traditional 
conversation from the tongue of him whose reputed 
effusions so illustrate the plenitude, power and possi- 
bilities of our language. Not a glimmer of light have 
we to catch a glimpse of his personal presence, whether 
tall or short, stout or slim, handsome or homely, whis- 
kered or shaven, or of complexion dark or light or 
otherwise. Scores of portraits there are from fruitful 
fancy drawn, over three hundred in all, but so unre- 
semblant to one another that fainter is our notion how 
he looked than if there were none. The two leading, 
conventional pictures of him, the one in bust at Strat- 
ford and the other of varying features commonly seen 
in editions of the works, are as unlike as two faces can 
well be. Few indeed are the great characters of history 
of whom we do not have more or less anecdotes. The 
only anecdote we have of Shakespeare is that he broke 
a law of the land and was a fugitive from justice. Few 
indeed are the celebrities of history whom we do not 
more or less see through the mist of time, building the 
structure of their fame and wearing its laurels. In 
vain have the eyes of scholarship for the last century 
been fixed to catch so much as a vanishing shadow of 
Shakespeare in the exercise of an authorship that over- 
shadows all other authorships. The dream alone of 
unreasoning idolatry can depict him in studious re- 

56 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

treat fashioning a plot recondite as subtle philosophy 
and rounding it into incomparable verse for the delecta- 
tion of future ages. As if the artisan who reared the 
greatest of all monuments to his native language should 
not have left some faint footprints in the sands of his 
time, outside the handiwork itself, to identify the builder 
with the masterpiece! True enough, some modern 
scribes write of William, the builder, as if they were 
personally acquainted with him three hundred years 
ago, and almost as if they helped him in his monu- 
mental feat; but alas! their pens are dipped in the ink 
of naked assertion, ipse dixit pure and simple. 

Nor will you, my friends, when you visit Stratford 
on the Avon, be much less in the mist if you should ex- 
pect to see there the house where William was born; 
nor should you think that among the mass of articles 
there displayed as relics there is so much as one gen- 
uine relic. The reliable historian of Stratford, R. B. 
Wheeler, author also of the guide-book there, pro- 
nounces them all "scandalous impositions," and he 
adds, "there does not exist a single article that ever 
belonged to William Shakespeare." 

As for the house itself, not till the year of the Garrick 
Jubilee, so-called, two hundred and five years after 
Shakespeare's birth, was there any serious attempt to 
identify the structure. Then divers wise men got to- 
gether for the purpose. They picked out three houses 
in three dififerent parts of the village, one or the other 
of which they reasoned or conjectured was it. This 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

was in 1769. The deliberations of the wise men contin- 
ued, or rather slumbered, thirty-one years. Mean- 
while one of the three houses was torn down. Two only 
were then left to choose between. The business was 
thus considerably simplified. It remained to determine 
which one of the two should be the immortal house. 
Why one more than the other was selected as the shrine 
is not told. No man knoweth. We simply know that 
we have the shrine and an abundance of relics, though 
in the beginning there were no relics whatever. 

He died, this renowned uncertainty, April 23, 1616, 
not on his birthday, as is still said, lately so said by the 
late Sir Walter Besant. He was baptized April 26, but 
the day of his birth is unknown. About a month be- 
fore his death he made his will. In it he leaves houses, 
lands, messuages, orchards, gardens, and with all due 
pains-taking bequeaths furniture, a sword, a punch- 
bowl, rings and trinkets to nephews, nieces, friends and 
acquaintances, and to his wife his "second-best bed." 
Even this narrow, niggard, imspeakable bequest was 
apparently an afterthought, for in the will it is an in- 
terlineation. A will made with great particularity, 
bequeathing an estate, yielding, it is supposed, several 
thousands a year, and no mention of a book, without 
allusion even by sentiment to that wondrous life-work, 
the embodiment of all manner of sentiment, the great- 
est book of the ages, penned, shall we say? by the 
same hand that signed such a last testament! "The 
man," says O'Connor, "whose ample page is rich with 

58 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPE.^E 

the transfigured spoils of ages, lived without a library!" 
"We hunger," so groans Richard Grant White, as 
vainly he delves for fact fit for his hero, "we hunger 
and we receive these husks. We open our mouths for 
food and we break our teeth against these stones." 

Yea, the man whose conception of man was the 
beauty of the world — how noble in reason, how in- 
finite in faculty, in form and moving how express and 
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehen- 
sion how like a god — he, dying, gave his second-best 
bed to his wife and the mother of his children and gave 
her nothing else! 

On the heavy stone slab that marks his grave is this 
inscription : — 

*' Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear 
To dig the dust enclosed here; 
Blest be the man that spares these stones. 
And cursed be who moves my bones." 

The imprecation in these rude verses, so-called by Rus- 
sell Lowell, forbade the laying of his wife by his side. 
"There is not recorded of him one noble or lovable 
action." "An obscure and profane life." "A record 
unadorned by a single excellence or virtue." Three ex- 
pressions of judgment respectively by Thomas David- 
son, Ralph Waldo Emerson and William O'Connor, 
all unquestionable authorities in Shakespearian bio- 
graphy. Such in all substantial particulars, so far as 
known, was William Shakespeare. Do men gather 
grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Yet this thorn or 

59 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

thistle of Stratford is the reputed author of literary 
productions the range and richness of which have im- 
pelled the most scholarly minds of the last century to 
ransack their vocabularies for praise and panegyric. 
Innumerable tributes might be cited in illustration. 
A few will suffice. The writers speak of the author, 
whoever he may be. 

"The name of Shakespeare is the greatest in our 
literature — it is the greatest in all literature." — 
Hallam. 

"There is the clearest evidence that his mind was 
richly stored with knowledge of all kinds." — Prof. 
Baynes. 

"An amazing genius which could pervade all nature 
at a glance and to whom nothing within the limits of 
the universe appeared to be unknown." — Whallet. 

"The great master who knew everything." — 
Dickens. 

"The range and accuracy of his knowledge were 
beyond precedent or later parallel." — Lowell. 

Little wonder then, in view of the total absence of 
any liberal culture possessed by Shakespeare, upon 
any theory other than the authorship itself, that John 
Bright should say, "Any man who believes that Wil- 
liam Shakespeare of Stratford wrote 'Hamlet' or 'Lear' 
is a fool"; and less wonder that Whittier should say, 
"whether Bacon wrote the wonderful Plays or not, I 
am quite sure that the man Shakespeare neither did or 
could." 

60 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

Did Bacon write them? We know only as we are 
led to infer from a multitude of facts and circum- 
stances. If living at a time contemporaneous with 
the production of the Plays, as he did, and being of 
sufficient age at the time of their appearance, as he 
was, and having a mind and a cultivation of mind ap- 
parently equal to their creation, as he had; there being 
no other intellect of that period apparent to any fair 
critical intelligence, of the requisite capacity, as there 
was none, and there being no positive evidence that 
any one else was the author, as there is not; we are 
constrained, it would seem, by the very law of cause 
and effect to conclude that he was, or rather is the 
author. 

Who was he, what were his attainments and his 
genius, that he should be deemed capable of writ- 
ing them? Let a few eminent authorities suffice to 
answer. 

"Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England 
or perhaps any other country ever produced." — 
Pope. 

"His imagination was fruitful and vivid, a tempera- 
ment of the most delicate sensibility, so excitable as 
to be affected by the slightest alterations of the at- 
mosphere." — Montague. 

"Who is there that, hearing the name of Bacon, 
does not instantly recognize everything of genius the 
most profound, of literature the most extensive, of 
discovery the most penetrating, of observation of hu- 

61 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

man life the most distinguishing and refined?" — 
Burke. 

"The most exquisitely constructed intellect that has 
ever been bestowed on any of the children of men. 
. . . His understanding resembled the tent which the 
fairy Parabanon gave to Prince Ahmed. Fold it and 
it seemed a toy in the hand of a lady; spread it and the 
armies of powerful Sultans might repose beneath its 
shade." — Macaulay. 

This scholar, the reach and versatility of whose 
abilities scholars so celebrate, was a child of surpassing 
precocity. At ten Queen Bess would pat him on his 
curly head and call him her little Lord Protector. 
Asked by the queen when a mere boy how old he was, 
"I am two years younger than Your Majesty's happy 
reign," said the infant courtier. 

At thirteen he entered Cambridge, but ere the time 
came to take his degree he had exhausted the curric- 
ulum of the University. His originality detected the 
system of instruction there as a servile deference to 
authority; that all thought was following obsequiously 
in the wake of generations gone; that progress was 
thereby impossible; and he viewed his fellow students 
as "becalmed ships." 

Impatiently he left England for the continent, where 
he traveled and studied for three years, invading the 
territories of literature, art, science, government and 
the languages, and bearing off as he went the spoils of 
a masterful student. Not vainly to his uncle did he 

6S 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

declare that he made all knowledge his province. For- 
sooth he "saw the future in the instant." 

He had a great ambition. He aspired to the highest 
judicial position of the realm, and to this, step by step 
up the ladder of law, he ultimately attained. But, 
though ranking thus high as a jurist, he attained a 
rank still higher as a philosopher. To these two dis- 
tinctions add such others as he reached in the roles of 
author, scientist, essayist, legislator, statesman, diplo- 
mat, orator, and with more reason than in case of any 
other man of his time his intellect may be pronounced 
one of infinite variety. 

His ambition was the highest, not only to excel in 
the domain of pure learning, but to hold the nearest 
place to the throne of his sovereign. Success in either 
ambition would be hindered by publicity of himself 
as a dramatist. To his judicial and political aspira- 
tions it would doubtless have been fatal, for in his time 
with the aristocratic circles the theatre was in disgrace, 
and whoever contributed to the stage, whether as 
writer or actor, was without caste. Yet was the theatre 
then as in times of old recognized as a school for edu- 
cation, as the "plectrum of the mind"; so Bacon called 
it, that is, the device used by the performer to strike 
the strings of his instrument. One of the leading im- 
pulses of Bacon's mind was to be an educator of his 
race and he would employ the drama as one of his 
agencies. Add to this impulse a native taste for poetry, 
a fervid, brilliant imagination, and a singular facility, 

63 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

observable in his grave writings in the use of poetic 
phrase. Add further what, if anything be known of 
Bacon, is true, — a mind active to restlessness and a 
proclivity to shine in every branch of literature. Then 
contemplate, if you can, such an intellect, such a spirit, 
and such a frenzy, living in health any considerable 
number of years without doing much of anything to 
give exhibition of his talents and powers. 

True, however, it is that for the space of some ten 
years, from 1597 to 1607, years cotemporaneous with 
the appearance of "Hamlet" (re- written), "Julius Cae- 
sar," "King Lear," and "Macbeth," the life of Bacon, 
if he did not write the Plays, or write or do other things 
of which we have no record, was a comparative blank. 
During this period he was holding no public office, was 
pecuniarily embarrassed, and was twice imprisoned 
for debt. His high preferments under King James did 
not begin till 1607. It is also true that previously, from 
1579 to 1597, during which interval all the earlier Plays 
took form and name, Bacon was apparently unem- 
ployed, except as he served briefly in Parliament, was 
attorney for the crown in some unimportant cases, 
and prepared his first volume of essays which was 
published in the latter year, 1597. Any hypothesis 
that a mind prone to industry, as was his, and so teem- 
ing with lore and wit, should be comparatively idle 
in these long intervals would seem grossly absurd. 

James I ascended the throne in 1603, and Bacon 
as yet had held no public position of note, though 

64 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

forty-two years old, and constantly aspiring to the 
highest in his profession. To be known as a poet would 
be against him, for poetry then, whether dramatic or 
other, was in little favor with princes or the courtiers 
of princes. Hence Swift's cry — 

"Unjustly poets we asperse." 

Upon the death of Elizabeth John Davies, a courtier, 
went to Scotland to meet King James, who was about 
to take the crown of England. To him Bacon addressed 
a letter, asking kind intercession in his behalf with 
the king and expressing the hope that he (Davies) 
would be "good to concealed poets." 

John Aubrey, a friend of Milton, who learned much 
about Bacon from persons who knew him personally, 
said "his lordship was a good poet but concealed." 
Bacon himself a little before his death solemnly averred 
that he had sought the good of mankind in some works 
usually "despised," and which therefore he had writ- 
ten in a "weed," or under a pseudonym. To these 
works, it is believed, Sir Tobey Matthew referred when 
he declared the author "the most prodigious wit of 
all the world, though known by the name of another." 

To Ben Jonson, one of the most ironical of men, to 
him more perhaps than to any one else, resort is had 
to prove that Shakespeare was the great poet. He, it is 
said, gave the characterization, "the sweet bard or 
swan of Avon." He also, who at one time was Bacon's 
private secretary, made a list of thirteen of the great 
men of his time he had known, placing Bacon at the 

65 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

head and styling him "the mark and acme of our 

language," but not including his friend Shakespeare 

in the list. He also, who presumably was in the great 

secret, if secret there was, wrote the epigram on the 

occasion of Bacon's sixtieth birthday, in which occur 

these lines of peculiar significance: — 

" 'T is a brave cause of joy, let it be known. 
For 'twere a narrow gladness kept thine own." 

He also penned the lines on the page opposite Shake- 
speare's portrait in the Folio Edition, quoted often as 
eulogistic, but regarded ;by closer observation as ex- 
quisite satire : — 

"Oh, could he but have drawn his wit 
As well in brass as he hath hit 
His face, the print would then surpass 
All that was ever writ in brass." 

To detect the satire one must look at the portrait, 
called by Ingleby "a monstrosity," by Morgan, "a 
face, with the wooden expression of the Indians used 
as signs on tobacco stores," and by Grant White "a 
hard, wooden, staring thing." 

But here is something that is not satire, but bold, 
indignant indictment, and admittedly it is Jonson's : — 

"Poor poet-ape, that would be thought our chief. 
Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit. 
From brokerage is become so bold a thief 
As we, the robbed, leave rage and pity it. 
At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean. 
Buy the reversion of old plays. Now grown 
To a little wealth and credit in the scene,^ 
He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own, 
66 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

And told of this, he slights it. Tut! such crimes 
The sluggish, gaping auditor devours; ' 
He marks not whose 't was first and after times 
May judge it to be his as well as ours." 

K Ben Jonson's mental brush did not paint Shake- 
speare in that picture, will some Shakespearean please 
name the "poet-ape" he did paint? 

Passing on now, with just a glance only at the mass 
of other testimony so material to the issue: testimony 
to the effect that whoever wrote the Plays must have 
been not only the soul of poetry and a master of dic- 
tion, but an accompUshed historian, a profound phi- 
losopher, an adept in statecraft, a lawyer technically 
exact as well as fully grounded in the principles of 
law, a physician in point of learning, a hnguist, a bota- 
nist, and scientist in other lines, a musician in under- 
standing of the principles of harmony; if not a navi- 
gator, versed in the art of navigation, apparent from 
evidence other than an unusual familiarity with nau- 
tical phrases; if not a courtier, schooled as if from child- 
hood in the customs, speech and etiquette of the courts 
of royalty, and a traveller on the continent no shore of 
which, it is believed, Shakespeare ever touched or saw, 
if indeed he ever smelt salt water outside the muddy, 
murky tide of the Thames — to all which requirements 
the mind and life of Bacon answer in every detail; 
testimony including also the tell-tale parallelisms, that 
array of thoughts, phrases and figures of speech found 
in Bacon's known works and which are so imaged and 
echoed in the tattling pages of the Plays; including 

67 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

still further certain plaints, hardly less significant, in 
the letters of Lady Bacon, the marvellous mother, 
which, if they mean anything, mean a maternal fear 
that her gifted son was in peril of fame as a dramatist; 
and including lastly, what should not be lost sight of 
from first to last, the fact that so odious was the fame 
of dramatic composition in Shakespeare's time that 
many a play went on the stage anonymously or in the 
name of some one other than the true author, and so 
common was it to attach to a play the name of Shake- 
speare, who among playwrights had acquired the nick- 
name of "Jack at all trades," that there came from 
the same dramatic nest eagles and geese alike; omit- 
ting discussion of such things which so "thunder in 
the index," I will relieve your kind patience after a 
single reflection more that seems too vital to be un- 
spoken in any treatment of the case. 

In the career of the peerless dramatist — so com- 
mentators concur in thinking — there must have been 
some dark period, some harrowing experience, some 
stroke of calamity, or some profound meditation that 
cast a lasting shadow over his mental and spiritual 
life. The dramas, in various passages, some of the trage- 
dies in their whole tenor, reflect a pervading sorrow 
and gloom that possessed the soul of the author. We 
know of no dark period in the life of William Shake- 
speare. If there was one, no searchlight of all the num- 
berless torches scholars have lit to search and peer 
with has found it out. In the "Encyclopedia Britan- 

68 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

nica" thirty -four of its ample pages are devoted to 
him. Dig out of the mass all that is actually known 
of the man, put it in decently brief English, and a sin- 
gle page will contain the whole and hardly embrace a 
material fact not stated or intimated in this discourse 
here to-night. All the rest is conjecture, speculation, 
inference, guess-work, fancy, impertinent pedantry, 
and sheer rhetoric to disguise the distressing silence 
of history. To make out the necessary "dark period" 
to identify the man of whom so little is known with 
the authorship ascribed to him, a speculative writer, 
in a flutter of fancy, theorizes that Shakespeare must 
have been bowed with depression by ''jear that genu- 
ine poetry and the deep seriousness of the Christian view 
oj life were about to be banished from the age" — an idea 
so far-fetched and, in view of his mental and moral 
character inferable from his business and divers acts 
of his narrowness and venality, so vacuous, that no- 
thing at last is wanting to mark the one step from the 
sublime to the ridiculous. 

But it is a matter of indubitable history that there 
was a dark period in the life of Francis Bacon. We 
know who and what he was. We know the heavy shock 
that came to him in the execution of his former bene- 
factor, the Earl of Essex, to which he himself, alas! 
had contributed; of the fear of assassination that 
haunted him by reason of that unhappy event; of the 
death of his only and most beloved brother caused 
thereby; of the anguish he endured in the hopeless 

69 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

insanity of his revered mother. Here indeed was dark- 
ness that might well inspire such dark, tragic concep- 
tions as startle us in " Othello," " Macbeth " and "Lear," 
tragedies, all creations after the taking off of Essex 
and its train of woe. 

Then we know of that other and more sorrowful 
chapter of darkness in his career — how he of the colos- 
sal intellect and vast acquirements — of the large and 
tender heart — of the nature so sensitive as to be af- 
fected by the slightest alterations of the atmosphere — 
how he aspired to the utmost heights of fame and did 
scale the arduous pathway till he reached a summit of 
renown that placed him indisputably above all competi- 
tors and contemporaries, where he "trod the ways of 
glory and sounded all the depths and shoals of honor." 
And then this man of proud spirit and matchless erudi- 
tion and lofty official station, with all the dignity of 
the woolsack, fell ! 

How the great jurist, statesman and philosopher 
writhed and sorrowed in his prostration — how the 
penalties imposed for his fault were speedily remitted 
— how friends who knew the nobility of his soul and 
all the extenuating circumstances of the time and the 
occasion could easily, upon reflection, excuse the in- 
firmity that cut him down, but how neither the re- 
mission of judicial penalty nor the sympathy of a 
kingdom, nor the bounty of the crown nor the remem- 
brance of his mighty accomplishments in the august 
cause of learning and letters could restore the con- 

70 



AUTHORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 

scious spirit to its accustomed pride and bearing, what 

though the catastrophe itself was powerless to abate 

one whit his amazing intellectual vigor and activity, 

so true of him it was in his retirement, — 

"Though fortune's malice overthrow my state. 
My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel," — 

all this is of the story of Francis Bacon, 

To him, whether it was penned before or after his 
fall, — afterward, so the evidence points, — who had 
so measured the ups and downs of human vicissitude, 
whose capacity was so adequate to the portrayal alike 
of glory and shame, whose eloquence was such, saith 
Jonson, that, being heard, the hearer feared lest he 
should make an end — to him no stretch of credulity 
is required if we assign that consummate burst of ex- 
altation and lament — the immortal speech of Wolsey. 



ADDRESS 

AT THE DEDICATION OF THE THAYER 
MEMORIAL LIBRARY BUILDING IN UX- 
BRIDGE, MASS., JUNE 20, 1894 

This should be and assuredly is a joyous day in the 
history of the town. A public want has been supplied. 
What they have needed long and sorely craved, the 
people of Uxbridge now have in full, ample measure 
— a suitable and beautiful habitation for their library. 
Convenient in location, elegant not less than sub- 
stantial in construction, commodious in all its appoint- 
ments, tasteful and happy in its surroundings, the 
building is at once an ornament to the town and a 
benefaction to all its inhabitants. 

We are assembled in grateful recognition of the gift 
to us of this fair edifice. Let us hope that our pride 
in it is, and is to be, equalled only by gratitude to the 
giver. Him, out of much fullness of heart, we this day 
thank and honor not for ourselves alone; but looking 
forward and down the line of time we fain would 
speak the thankful emotions of the unborn whose 
privilege it may be in the advancing tide of years to 
frequent the place and grow familiar with its apart- 
ments, while gleaning of the knowledge stored within 
its walls. 

72 



THAYER MEMORIAL LIBRARY 

The giver has built for himself a monument, and in 
wisdom built it. Greatly we felicitate ourselves on 
this act of his munificence. May we not also congratu- 
late the benefactor that, having the ability, he has had 
the rarity of mind to erect such a memorial — a 
memorial more enduring to his memory than shaft of 
marble or bronze, because it is a deed done in the field 
of public enterprise and public good, and registered 
where every day the people of his native town will 
turn the leaf to read it. Fortunate, doubly fortunate 
among men are they who in the clear sky -light of their 
life-time use their possessions to upbuild and prosper 
the community — who are not content simply to have 
their works live after them, but prefer both to live and 
die in the presence of some noble, far-reaching action 
whose mission is to alleviate and elevate mankind. 

Donations of a public nature there sometimes are, 
questionable as to propriety or merit of the object, or 
if the end in view be faultless, the gift itself, hampered 
by restrictions, becomes a source of controversy in the 
neighborhood and the benefit is less than the vexation. 
Not so with the donation accepted here to-day. While 
the object of it is far above criticism, the transfer of 
the estate, unhedged by subtile and petty conditions, 
is as absolute as utility requires. We, the people of 
Uxbridge, by grace of the donor, unfettered by em- 
barrassing reservations, own and possess this comely 
edifice, ample in space, admirable in arrangements, for 
all the practical and polite purposes of a free public 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

library. How much that declaration means for the 
welfare of the town, means for the adult population, 
for its youth, for its schools! Not a school-house but 
is handsomer to the eye by reflection of the material 
beauty of this structure; not a school but is to be better 
directed on its educational pathway and upborne to a 
clearer apprehension of the significance of books by 
reason of the appropriateness of the library home; for 
the human mind is so touched, turned and tempered 
by the external fitness of things, that where the fitness 
does not prevail there is ever a waste of mental force 
in warring with incongruities of the situation. A good 
library is a blessing though housed in a hovel. That 
its power to bless is quite in ratio to the conveniences 
and niceties of its abode would seem self-evident. 

The library of the town now comprises, as nearly as 
count may determine, 6750 volumes. Established in 
April, 1874, with some 650 books as a nucleus, the con- 
tribution of the Agricultural and Social Library Asso- 
ciations and individuals, it has steadily grown to its 
present proportions, and the record of the librarian 
shows that the popular appreciation of it has been 
commensurate with the growth. Throughout the 
twenty years of its existence the library has had an 
earnest, intelligent and discriminating friend in the 
Hon. C. A. Wheelock, who has given much time and 
taken great pains not only in the selection of books, 
but in the cataloguing of them, which in itself is an art. 
The town is under special obligations to Mr. Wheelock 

74 



THAYER MEMORIAL LIBRARY 

for his devotion in this field of labor. Nor should we 
omit kindly mention of those who for many years were 
his considerate and faithful associates in the work — 
Messrs. Macomber, Capron, Taft, Thayer, Slater and 
Sprague. Others who have come later into the service 
have given evidence that they are not unmindful of the 
responsibility of their high office — the trusteeship 
of a free public library. 

It may be safely remarked that as compared with 
other public libraries of similar size ours is as free as 
any of objedional books. By this expression is not here 
meant books of immoral tone or tendency. Against the 
introduction of such into a public library we should 
feel assured that the sentiment of New England, if not 
of American society in general, erects an all sufficient 
barrier. Objectionable books others than those of 
immoral argument, purpose or spirit there are very 
many, and of making them there would seem to be no 
end. Grant that they do not litter the earth, it is 
literal truth that they are to be seen in alarming heaps 
at stores and stations, while there is no train or steamer 
or summer- side where their voice is not heard. So 
extraordinary their prevalence that it baffles calcula- 
tion how an industrious press contrives to turn out the 
amazing superabundance, and the wonder grows as we 
essay to conceive whence cometh and where campeth 
the army of scribblers who reel off the trash. Where 
do they live? How do they look? What is their faith? 
Under what stars were they born? We never seem to 

75 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

know personally any of them. Everybody looks inno- 
cent enough. In face, form, voice and walk, if not in 
conversation, people appear about as they were in the 
dear old days of the fathers. Outwardly there is not 
much racial change; yet is there an incredible percent- 
age of the human kind whose inhuman pursuit is to 
generate volumes in the similitude of books in flagrant 
distortion of all the accepted attributes of both man 
and woman, and patrons of the preposterous craft are 
so legion in name as to swell demand for an ever- 
increasing supply of the rubbish. Newspapers con- 
spire with booklets, and magazinelets with picturism, 
to blizzard and cyclone the realm of mental endeavor. 
Peace of mind is found only in headlong escape from 
the bewildering chatter of noveleers and frantic wood- 
cut appeals to fatigued humanity. With such a surging 
deluge of pale ink and print to match the flood, vitiat- 
ing to intellect, corruptive of taste, enervating to 
mental and as well to the moral faculties, the task of a 
discreet selection of books for intellectual development 
and elevation grows more and more arduous. To 
measure the difficulties of a committee in their toil to 
enrich a library by enlarging it one has but to recall 
his own perplexity when he would buy a new book and 
good for himself or a friend. What to buy? What to 
read? The problem, though not recent for solution, 
waxes harder and harder to solve. To read a book all 
through before buying, besides being a breach of good 
manners, is sometimes inconvenient. To return it to 

76 



THAYER MEMORIAL LIBRARY 

the vender when found worthless after purchase, would 
still keep the article cumbering the earth even if the 
purchase money were restored. A perilous thing it has 
come to be to buy a book, unless it be safe to take the 
word of the genial book-agent who calls now and then 
to assure you that the indispensable publication of the 
age is forthcoming to illumine your home with a great 
and perpetual light. Quoth Byron: — 

A book's a book although there's nothing in't. 

The great bard's jest appears to have been taken in 
dead earnest, 

I am not contending that books are not produced 
now, as good as there have been in generations recent 
or in the long, long ago. In press or manuscript, or 
taking shape in human thought to-day, are doubtless 
classics of the future equal in a general way to the 
famed works of ancient or modern authors, whether 
in the domain of history, philosophy, science, fiction 
or poetry. A sorry reflection on our civilization it 
would be to admit, in view of all our lore in literature 
and art derived from the remote past, the unspent and 
unspendable legacies of Rome, Greece, Palestine and 
the land of Confucius, and gathered in larger volume 
from the fields of bountiful culture since Tacitus and 
Pliny wrote, Hortensius and Pericles spoke, Socrates 
and Aristotle thought, and Isaiah and Homer sang, and 
in further view of our greater opportunities, better 
than ever before, for education, for enlargement of 
understanding and for the triumphs of intellect — so 

77 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

equipped to admit that we were not producing authors 
the equals alike of the ancients and their rivals whose 
names star the firmament of the world of modern let- 
ters. As much now as ever, more now than ever, we 
ought to be able to believe that there are Bacons and 
Newtons, Lockes and Gibbons climbing into incon- 
testable fame; Macaulays, Bancrofts, Irvings and 
Prescotts; Miltons, Byrons, Bryants and WTiittiers; 
Carlyles and Emersons; Scotts and Goldsmiths; Thack- 
erays, Eliots and Hawthornes. Solid wheat enough is 
pouring from the press, the product of living men and 
living women. We are far from famine. Famish we 
need not. Our danger is seK-destruction in devouring 
chaff. Against this peril they may do much who have 
in charge our free public hbraries. Old and young alike 
are apt to read first and most what books they may, 
without money and without price.Let them find noth- 
ing in the free library that cannot be read with profit, 
that will not improve taste, nurture a pure and rugged 
sentiment, kindle lofty aspirations, and inspire the 
imagination to body forth in healthful strain the 
forms of things unknown. A library so guarded and 
free is a fountain-source of infinite joy and advantage 
to a people whose possession it chances to be. Then in 
the right sense of the phrase it is a collection of books 
of such sort as Wordsworth celebrates : — 

a substantial world, both pure and good: 

Round these with tendrils strong as flesh and blood 
Ouj pastime and our happiness may grow; ' 

78 



THAYER MEMORIAL LIBRARY 

Within whose silent chamber treasure lies. 
Preserved from age to age, more precious far 
Than that accumulated store of gold 
And orient gems, which for a day of need, 
The Sultan hides deep in ancestral tombs. 

Another thought is due to the hour. While it is of 
signal importance that we read only good books, it is 
to the last degree desirable that we do not undertake 
the reading of too many. In the old Greek apothegm, 
" beware of the man of one book," nestles a lot of fine 
sense. If one aim to shine, whether in public or social 
life, he will in the measure of his natural ability be apt 
to figure to more purpose if, instead of tasting a thou- 
sand, he has grasped the contents of a few sterling 
books. Instances enough go to show how true is this 
remark. Perhaps the most notable one in all history 
is that of Abraham Lincoln, who, though he had hardly 
read more miscellaneous books in number than the 
years of his life, had yet read so much that he was of 
surpassing intelligence, of profound wisdom, and at 
times so elegant in his diction that some of his utter- 
ances are the marvel of scholarship. The explanation 
of the phenomenon, if phenomenon it be, is that most 
books are but reflections of others, insomuch that who- 
ever has fairly mastered an author of repute in one 
branch of literature little needs to touch other authors 
in the same line. Comparatively speaking, the multi- 
tude of ideas is, after all, not large. Of variations of 
ideas there is an infinitude, but the variations do not 
change the thought. Simply they modify it, and how 

79 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

often without bettering it and how often too without 
inciting thought in the reader. One of the ablest of 
American jurists, who however had no special repu- 
tation for scholarship in jurisprudence, said that he 
could guess pretty well what the law was or ought to be 
in a case from what he knew of law in general; and so 
habitually did he guess pretty well that his opinions 
were rarely set aside. He had grounded himself by 
mastery of the standard text-books and leading deci- 
sions. In like manner many others touch bottom in 
other departments of literature. 

Observe too, if you will, the mania both to write and 
read new books on old subjects, though often they 
shed no fresh light thereon, none save as the author 
may embellish his theme by drawing on his imagina- 
tion. A striking illustration we have of this in the score 
of biographies written, and of course read, of the 
Saviour — He who spake as never man spake. A life 
of Christ swelled to two considerable volumes was 
written by Ward Beecher, yet did the genius frankly 
admit that the only story to be told was all in the Gos- 
pels. The pamphlet of Thomas Paine, called " Common 
Sense," published on the eve of the Revolution and 
productive of such effect as to win for its author the 
appellation of " Hero Author of American Independ- 
ence," contains about all there is to be said in favor 
of republican form of government as distinguished 
from monarchy. Nobody in a hundred and twenty 
years has eclipsed the Common Sense that fired the 

80 



THAYER MEMORIAL LIBRARY 

souls and illuminated the understandings of the sol- 
diers and statesmen of the Revolution. It is a joy for- 
ever to get at and into a book that is a nut full of meat. 
Rufus Choate, himself a prince of book-worms, ex- 
claimed to a friend: "Read Burke, he knew every- 
thing!" The advice was at once an exaggeration and 
a confession of one who had roamed through the uni- 
verse of letters. Exaggeration, yet how laden with 
truth; for in the Burkes as in the Shakespeares we have 
near all ideas in action; master-hand touches on near 
all subjects, and medicine that medicines the mind 
into wholesome aversion for the things that do not 
stimulate it. It would thus appear that, if we make the 
right selection of books and exhaustively use them, 
we shall read not less, but more, because more thereby 
is the gain of knowledge. 

Far from my desire is it to say aught to abate the 
zeal for book-reading. Something, if possible, I would 
say to keen the edge of discrimination, to the end that 
loose, flimsy, sensational catch-penny publications be 
slighted, as we slight offensive people — shoved off 
the shelves if they have place thereon, and if they have 
not, excluded. This be our thought to take home here 
and now for a guidance in the vast field of mental and 
moral culture — just in proportion as we cultivate 
taste for the better literature, choose and hold fast to 
the best authors in history, philosophy, political 
economy, theology, ethics, fiction and the poetry that 
touches the passions but to ennoble the soul, shall we 

81 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

create demand for pithy and high-toned literary pro- 
ductions, and the supply will equal the demand. 
Writers write for the market. Elevate the tone of the 
market and the tone of authorship will rise to the level 
of the mart. 

To such a lofty labor of love the edifice we dedicate 
invites those who have control of the free public library 
that is to be stored and treasured in it. Along with the 
dedication of the building let the literary servants of 
the town dedicate themselves to a still nobler service. 
Expectation of results, while not unreasonable, should 
yet run high even as it is a high trust to be charged 
with — the shaping of the character, the mission, and 
the wide-spreading influence of this institution whose 
future weal at this hour so holds place in our mind and 
meditation. For a faithful stewardship in guarding 
and uplifting it to be an unmistakable light and benefi- 
cence in the community, the praises of the living shall 
reward the doers of so great a work, nor less shall the 
on-coming generations contemplate their action and 
hold their names, together with the honored name 
inscribed over the portal of the Memorial Building, 
in lasting, grateful remembrance. 



ADDRESS 

ON THE OCCASION OF THE SERVICES IN 
MEMORY OF GENERAL GRANT, HELD AT 
UXBRIDGE, MASS., AUGUST 8, 1885 

In the early hours of the great war for the Union of 
the States, a brief letter was addressed to the War 
Department of the imperiled government, tendering 
the writer's service as a soldier. The letter was not 
answered, and, after diligent search, is nowhere to be 
found among the papers of the war oflBce. Presumably 
it was read and tossed into the waste-basket. The 
hand that wrote the letter was the same that four years 
later indited the memorable message to General Lee, 
suggesting the avoidance of further effusion of blood 
by the surrender of the insurgent army, then battling, 
as for years it had battled, in defence of the Capital 
of the Confederacy. The writer was Ulysses S. Grant, 
late the chief of the armies of the Union, and President 
of the Republic preserved by their valor, whose death 
has draped the land in mourning and bowed the hearts 
of all the people in a common sorrow. It is, therefore, 
fit that we should suspend our avocations for the day 
and join in the universal expression of respect for the 
memory of the departed chieftain and chief magistrate. 
We pause at his grave to pay the homage of hearts 

83 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

deeply grateful for a career so illustrious and indis- 
solubly blended with the weal of the country. 

The story of his life is a great history. It is to be 
found in many volumes already written, and is to be 
read in many more yet to be penned by the future 
scribe in the clearer light of succeeding time. Here and 
now we can but glance at the story so touching that it 
thrills with reverent joy every home, and so grand that 
it elevates and inspires every nation. 

In a little house still standing in the little Ohio town 
of Point Pleasant, and for the possession of which, as 
a notable relic, several states are now competing, the 
boy whose baptismal name was Hiram Ulysses, was 
born April 27, 1822. The youth showed no sign of 
aptness for war, unless in his coolness as a mere child, 
firing a pistol, and his mastery in riding a horse. "Of 
all the possible futures I ever dreamed of when a boy, 
being a soldier was not among them," said the hero 
not long ago. But it happened to him at seventeen 
to be appointed to a cadetship at West Point, and in 
the matriculation accident changed his name. The 
initials, H. U., were symbolized into U. S. Grant. 

At the school, save as he distanced all cadets in 
horsemanship, he made no mark of military promise. 
In a class of over a hundred he '' never succeeded in 
getting very near either the bead or the foot." " I 
graduated," such his words, '' as No. 21, and was glad 
to get it." 

Then, as of course, he became a lieutenant of the 
84 



GENERAL GRANT 

army, and as such served through the Mexican War 
and, except Buena Vista, fought in every battle of it. 
He there gained no noisy note, but showed the stuff 
he was made of. Throughout his Mexican service the 
Grant of Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, 
Appomattox, is easily traceable in the later light of 
those exploits. An anecdote told by Zachary Taylor 
is illustrative : The lieutenant was in charge of a party 
of men detailed to clear the way for the advance of 
boats laden with troops. Unable to make his men 
understand by words how to do their work, he jumped 
into the water up to his waist and took hold with his 
own hands. Some foppish officers, looking on, began 
to jeer at his zeal, when General Taylor, " Old Rough 
and Ready," came upon the scene and thus silenced 
their raillery: "7 wish I had more officers like Grant" 

Of army life the lieutenant, at length a captain, grew 
weary. Little was the charm of it after his marriage 
to Julia Dent, now the widowed and honored mother 
of his children, and so he withdrew from the service 
and became a farmer and then a tanner, and a tanner 
he was along with his father at Galena when the bloody 
waves of the rebellion began to break. He remembered 
that he was educated at the government's expense and 
owed the government a duty, but the offer of his ser- 
vice at Washington was unnoticed, and the Governor 
of his State also heeded not his application. "Forty 
applicants I have," said the Governor, "to one place 
to give." Yet had this modest West Pointer, whose 

85 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

patriot hand was thus extended and spurned, at that 
very time written a private letter which, in judgment 
and prescience, displayed a grasp of the national sit- 
uation, outrunning all contemporaneous calculations 
and forecastings. One man there was in Illinois, Elihu 
B. Washburne, glory be to his name ! who knew enough 
to know that there was a great hope bound up in this 
unpretentious ex-captain of Galena, and he had influ- 
ence enough to start the willing patriot at the head of 
an Illinois regiment, albeit the coy colonel questioned 
himself whether he knew enough to command a regi- 
ment. 

Then began that career which the world celebrates. 
Then into the texture of the Army of the West was 
steadily woven that combination thread of skill, cour- 
age and character which was to strengthen it for the 
rising emergencies. 

First of note among the exploits of the soldier, who 
was now in action, was the feat at Belmont, where he 
dispersed a camp of secessionists plotting to rebelize 
Missouri. This and his movements immediately sub- 
sequent, together with his earlier sally at Paducah, 
were of timely moment. They operated to hold the 
Ohio River and keep Kentucky in the Union. When 
Fort Henry had succumbed to Commodore Foote, 
Grant, then a brigadier, moved, with inferior numbers, 
against Fort Donelson, the key to Nashville. After 
three days of hard fighting, followed by a vigorous 
assault, he demanded of Buckner, his old schoolmate 

86 



GENERAL GRANT 

and this day one of his pall-bearers, the " unconditional 
surrender." The surrender ensued. — This was the 
first considerable success of the war. It wired in thun- 
der-tones the victor's name to Washington and brought 
him a major general's commission. Aided by the cap- 
ture of Fort Henry, it opened the Cumberland and 
Tennessee rivers. It was a bracing influence every- 
where. Then came the hot battle of Shiloh, where the 
Union force, whatever the dispute as to the details of 
the contest, was left in possession of the field. Farra- 
gut had thundered up from the Delta and passed New 
Orleans, and Grant now pushed southward to meet 
him and open the Mississippi. The stronghold of 
Vicksburg stood a bristling mountain in his pathway, 
but his daring and strategy were equal to its subjuga- 
tion. Six times, in six different ways, it is said, he tried 
his hand without avail. His seventh plan was so pene- 
trating and intrepid that feebler minds trembled for 
his judgment; but the plan was right, and on July 4, 
1863, the country was electrified by the news that that 
gigantic fortress had fallen, and presently thereafter 
the great river ran un vexed to the sea. It is enough 
to say of that siege and capture what Admiral Porter, 
who commanded the fleet, will say of it in his forth- 
coming work: — 

"If General Grant had never performed any other 
military act during the war, the capture of Vicksburg 
alone would have entitled him to the highest renown. 
He had an enemy to deal with of twice his force, an 

87 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

protected by defences never surpassed in the art of 
war. I saw myself the great strongholds at Sevastopol, 
of the Malakoff tower and the Redan the day after they 
were taken by a combined army of 120,000 men, and 
these strongholds, which have become famous in bal- 
lads and story, never in any way compared with the 
defences of Vicksburg, which looked as if a thousand 
Titans had been put to work to make those heights 
unassailable." 

The fall of Vicksburg severed the Confederacy. It 
placed the hero at the head of the armies of the West 
and the cry came from every quarter, Place him at the 
head of the armies of the Union. It was done, and the 
tanner of Galena, who in 1861 could not get his letter 
answered, was in 1864 Lieutenant General of the 
United States. Then he came East to take the reins 
of the splendid Army of the Potomac. But he came 
fighting his way. His passage eastward was a march of 
war which, for prowess in arms, has but few parallels 
in history. The campaign of Chickamauga, the battles 
of Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge, Lookout Mountain, 
— " Hooker's fight above the clouds," — these were 
the later heralds of his approach from the West. The 
Army of the Potomac! Splendid it was in material 
and discipline, and emphatic was the victory it had 
achieved under Meade, simultaneously with the blow 
at Vicksburg; but until Grant appeared in Washington, 
where for the first time after three years of war he 
took the hand of President Lincoln, the armies East 

88 



GENERAL GRANT 

and West had, to use his own expression, "pulled like 
a balky team." It was his mission, as it also proved 
his genius, to inspire them by a single will to move and 
act in concert and unison. To this end it was much in 
his favor that he had gained so much of the public 
confidence; but the public mind had become so fevered 
and impatient by reverses and disappointments here 
and there under so many generals, that the fund of 
confidence would speedily have been exhausted but 
for the ability and constancy of a leader to keep the 
supply up even with the demand. Altogether, com- 
mander never assumed supreme command under 
graver circumstances. Thousands of families that had 
given of their sons were feeling sore, and thousands 
more that had sons to bleed were growing restless. 
Recruiting was dull. The sound of draft grated on the 
ear. Political opposition was taking advantage of the 
despondency to embarrass the administration and dis- 
hearten the army. On every hand was heard the mut- 
tering which a few months later broke out in the 
declaration that the war was a failure. 

Under such circumstances Grant entered the Wilder- 
ness to face Lee's army and fight, pursuant to his plan, 
the only feasible plan, to "pound away," and pound 
the rebellion down. Of necessity the carnage was 
awful, and against this fighting general the cry was 
raised of " Butcher! butcher! " But he heeded not the 
taunt, he reeled not back toward Washington; he 
pushed steadily toward Richmond, and, though when 

89 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

he reached the James he had lost forty thousand men 
in killed, wounded and missing, he was there to stay. 
He was there to fight it out on that line if it took all sum- 
mer. It took all summer and more too; but when, in the 
execution of his far-seeing plan, he had started the 
gallant Sherman careering to the sea and had sent the 
winged Sheridan to keep rebels busy elsewhere, he 
laid his iron hand on the throat of the Confederacy, 
and Richmond fell. The surrender of Lee! Who that 
was living to hear that news, as with the wings of 
lightning it flew on a thousand wires, will ever forget 
the effect of it? Then the weary country drew a long 
breath of relief. Then was Grant's fame fixed as a star 
in the firmament of martial achievement. One thing 
only remained to complete it as eclipsing all heroism 
in warfare — magnanimity to the fallen foe. 

This he had the soul to exercise in such measure as 
conqueror never measured out before. To most people 
at the North it was distasteful then. So cruel was the 
war they had been called to wage purely in defence 
of civil liberty, so reckless had been the insurgents in 
their prolonged efforts to pull down the pillars of 
republican government, so heartless had been their 
treatment of the federal prisoners, that it seemed to 
the mass of loyal people hardly other than inhuman 
to treat such a foe as human. But General Grant saw 
the future in the instant. Nobody questions now the 
wisdom of his moderation, but what a sagacity of mind 
and serenity of soul it required to rise above the heat 

90 



GENERAL GRANT 

and passion of the hour and resist the clamors of the 
victorious host of the field and the exultant multitude 
of the land! 

It is to be observed — what is not generally remem- 
bered — that when his officers, in the flush of their 
excitement over the glad event of Appomattox, began 
to thunder with their artillery in signalization of the 
triumph, the commander bade silence to their guns. 
He thought that the enemy, who were yet to be 
countrymen, should not thus be further humiliated. 
As for the conqueror himself, he cared so little for the 
appearance of triumph that he went not into Rich- 
mond nor even crossed over the lines he had so battled 
to break through. 

The time was now ripe for a farewell order to the 
armies. In it the Lieutenant General thus eloquently 
spoke: — 

"Victory has crowned your valor and secured the 
purpose of your patriotic hearts, and with the grati- 
tude of your countrymen and the highest honors a 
great and free nation can accord, you will soon be 
permitted to return to your homes and families, con- 
scious of having discharged the highest duty of Ameri- 
can citizens. To achieve these glorious triumphs and 
secure to yourselves, fellow-countrymen, and posterity 
the blessings of free institutions, tens of thousands 
of your gallant comrades have fallen and sealed the 
priceless legacy with their blood. The graves of these 
a grateful nation bedews with tears, honors their 

91 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

memories, and will ever cherish and support their 
stricken families." 

Straightway the commander began to muster out 
the troops that they might return to their homes. By 
November 15, 1865, he had sent home 800,963 men. 
The number was monthly increased until 1,023,021 
had received their discharge. — As a crowning appre- 
ciation of his services Congress revived the grade of 
General, and to that high office the hero of many 
fields was duly appointed. 

The assassination of Lincoln, while yet the pseans 
of victory were filling all the air, had rendered critical 
in the extreme the whole situation. How much we were 
indebted in those anxious days to the cool head of 
Grant in steadying the ship of state and keeping her 
off the breakers we have always understood somewhat, 
but the secret is growing an open one that TN^ithout 
Grant, while the recalcitrant Johnson was forgetting 
his loyalty, there might, probably would, have been 
a revolt more fearful than that which at such a cost 
of blood and treasure had been subdued. If this view 
be correct, how immensely it adds to the debt of grati- 
tude which the country owes to the patriot whose life- 
less form the solemn procession to-day follows to the 
grave! With such a contingency unknown and un- 
thought of, no wonder that intelligent freemen, looking 
the action of the great soldier all over, from the sur- 
render of Buckner to the surrender of Lee, called him 
to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic. If such was 

92 



GENERAL GRANT 

the contingency and Grant was the patriot averting 
the catastrophe, should we not at this day lament if 
so great a servant had not been elevated to the presi- 
dency? Nor is there, indeed, aught to regret in him 
as president, if we marshal his brave acts and good and 
place them beside his little faults, every one of which 
leaned always to virtue's side. His plain, unosten- 
tatious bearing, matching the democratic idea, his 
integrity which enmity itself could not impeach, the 
clearness of his apprehension touching the grave ques- 
tions of finance, his sturdy resolution in asserting his 
convictions to stay financial disaster, the jealousy of 
his regard for the public credit, the stand he took, firm 
as a rock, against repudiation, his policy of justice and 
fair play for the freedmen, his advanced views regard- 
ing reforms of the civil service and his efforts to give 
them effect, the common sense which pervaded all his 
messages and handled our foreign relations in such tem- 
per and such quiet dignity as to keep us as a people 
high in the esteem of the world — these are things 
which make his administration for eight years of the 
national government memorably honorable. 

If we come to some estimate of the man as finding 
a place for him on the scale of greatness, it is quite 
impossible to find it by comparison with others who 
have figured largely on the stage of human action. 
He was Grant. Though there were heroes before Aga- 
memnon, there was never a Grant before the composed 
and self-reliant person as we now see him, from the 



ARTHUR A. PUTNA^I 

time of his graduation as a cadet to the hour when he 
closed his eyes at Mount McGregor. 

As a soldier he was unique. So naturally and un- 
fussingly he did his work that critics, even while his 
performances were challenging world-wide attention, 
shrank from ranking him among great captains. The 
simplicity of his manner, the non-parade of his action, 
and the remarkable ease with which he bore his ^^cto- 
ries staggered military criticism at first. Not till the 
historian Motley made his speech in the political can- 
vass of 1868 was there applied to him the word genius. 
Motley applied it boldly. Then others, as they thought 
over his accomplishments, began to feel, though 
hardly to say, that possibly there might be genius in 
such consummations. If they said so, they were quite 
sure to exclude him from the niche of the world-famous 
warriors. Up to the time of Grant, leadership in arms 
had so far been identical with vaulting ambition that 
judgment near forsook its seat when a leader appeared 
whose only ambition was to serve his country in the 
role of an honest countryman. Grant could not be 
a Caesar in war, 'twas thought, because he showed 
otherwise no signs of Caesarism. The pretence that he 
was Csesarly inclined was the effect, not of his likeness 
to the spirit of the Roman, but of his achievements, 
which were of such Roman magnitude. Gambetta, 
however, viewing his exploits from afar and vrith the 
disinterested eye of genius, pronounced Grant's mili- 
tary career the most brilliant since the days of Napoleon. 

94 



GENERAL GRANT 

He said he even surpassed the great French captain 
in this — that he never failed. Welhngton drove 
Napoleon from Waterloo; the ill-armed Teutons of the 
Rhine drove back the splendidly-equipped Romans 
under Julius Ciesar, fresh from the battles of the trium- 
virate; Xerxes failed in his expedition against Greece, 
and Alexander's successes, as well as his reverses, were 
against armies for the most part inferior to his own. 
But General Grant met his equals in intelligence and 
military skill, and, if he was hard pressed at one or two 
places, notably at Pittsburg Landing and Cold Harbor, 
it was the enemy and not he who ultimately retreated. 
"Moreover," says the same authority, "no other gen- 
eral known to history ever commanded such large 
armies for an equal period of time with success." 

But, though so mighty a man of war, he was emi- 
nently a man of peace. It has been said, doubtless 
truly, that no soldier of the army was gladder than the 
Lieutenant General when the war was over. War he 
did not like — he liked neither the business nor the 
pomp and circumstance of it. In England, one of the 
highest honors that can be accorded a foreigner is to 
tender him a review of the regular troops. This honor 
was tendered Grant. Respectfully he declined it, and 
then to his near friends who were with him he said: 
"I have seen enough of soldiers." WTiat could be 
more impressive of lofty republican citizenship than 
the promptness with which, after the surrender, he 
sheathed his sword and proceeded to muster out of the 

95 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

service a million soldiers that they might do what he 
aimed to have the defeated Confederates do by his 
parole of them — go home and beat their spears into 
pruning-hooks ! How too, as pointing the nobility of 
the chieftain, came from him like a benediction upon 
all the people that great speech of four words — ''Let 
us have 'peace." 

Thus was he, after as well as during the strife, the 
precise man for the surpassing occasion. — True it is 
that every considerable crisis in national life is apt to 
bring along the right person to head and control it. 
We never tire of referring to the instances. Cromwell 
in England, Napoleon in France, Garibaldi in Italy, 
Washington in the uncertain struggle of the Revolu- 
tion, Lincoln at the helm in the storm of the Rebellion. 
These are the more familiar "providences " of modern 
times. Yet looking the list all over, however long it 
may be made, there seems no instance more signal of 
one suited and proportioned to a complex emergency 
than that of Grant, rising out of obscurity and going 
majestically up to the head of the embattled legions 
which he finally led to the grandest of all victories. 
How easy to see that we might have had given us the 
man to achieve the victory, and then have soiled his 
name by not knowing how to use it. How easy to see 
that we might have had the successful warrior, but so 
inflamed by success and unbalanced by ambition as to 
rock from its base the very Republic his arm had saved. 
How easy to see that, if neither of these evils had 

96 



GENERAL GRANT 

ensued, the laureled victor might otherwise have 
clouded his reputation and his fame not have been an 
inheritance to treasure. Such was not Grant. Great 
as he was in planning the campaign and waging the 
battle, he was greater still when the battle was over 
and the enemy was at his feet. Much as he showed in 
the highest positions alike military and civil, his man- 
hood was yet more sublime as the simple citizen, 
travelling around the globe, showered by all the hon- 
ors the potentates of the earth could bestow, and carry- 
ing himself with such poise among kings abroad and 
his countrymen at home that envy itself could not but 
joy in the lustre of his name. Still more — supreme 
as he was as soldier, excellent as he was as magistrate, 
admirable as he was as citizen, it was yet reserved that 
he should evoke the applause of all beholders as the 
hero at the door of death, wonderful in patience under 
the tortures of disease, and resolutely toiling on to the 
last in thoughtful provision for the beloved family he 
was to leave behind. 

Such qualities well considered, who shall deny him 
the title to greatness in the broadest sense of the word? 
Who shall say that the Richmond Dispatch, however 
belated the tribute, overstates what will be the voice 
of posterity? that journal, once so hostile, whose words 
are: "He is not only one of the immortals, but he is 
one of them by right. He was so pervaded by greatness 
that he seemed not to be conscious that he was great. 
He was magnanimous, modest, faithful to his friends, 

97 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

just to all men so far as his surroundings permitted, 
above simulation and dissimulation, self-poised and 
equal to every occasion." 

Here is testimony, emphatic and quite conclusive, 
that the conqueror of an insurgent people in arms, the 
most difficult to placate, conquered also the hostile 
hearts. Of Christian mould this victor ! In the glowing 
light of such a fame, the renown of the mightiest Julius 
and the Macedonian loses lustre and fails to charm. It 
is for this character, unequaled it would seem, take it 
all and in all, that we should, as a people, be reverently 
grateful — a character which is eminently the product 
of the United States and the institutions thereof, a 
character now the possession past recall of republican 
America for each and all of us to be proud of, thankful 
for, and henceforth to cherish as a glorious, precious 
memory. 

We may glory in his name as he was a mighty war- 
rior in a noble cause; we may rejoice in it as he was a 
tribune of the people and betrayed not the trust; we 
may praise him for that he was faultlessly generous 
toward his associates in arms; we may admire him, 
because he was imperturbable, unsoured, undeterred 
from duty, however assailed by calumny or wronged 
by detraction; we may take pride that he made the 
circuit of the globe in such triumph as never mortal 
made it before; but, after all, our abiding satisfaction 
must be that, through good report and evil report, he 
bore himself as a citizen in whom was no guile, a 

98 



GENERAL GRANT 

man of lofty virtue, whose honesty, in pubHc station 
and private life, was only equaled by his modesty. 

The corse of the illustrious departed to-day is borne 
to the final resting-place. Sacred be the dust that will 
there repose on the bank of the historic Hudson. Se- 
cluded by ample area from the turmoil of the town, 
beautified and hushed by the gracious umbrage of 
stately trees, the spot there to be marked by appropriate 
monument shall be consecrated ground, whither the 
lovers of Liberty regulated by Law will repair from 
every clime to do homage to the memory of him who 
was the ideal warrior of a free people and a potent bene- 
factor of mankind. 



ADDRESS 

AT THE DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS' 
MONUMENT IN UXBRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 

14, 1898 

It is thirty -three years and more since the close of the 
great war for the salvation of the American Union. A 
round generation has rolled away since the event which 
marked the triumph of the Union arms. The time has 
wrought many changes and made us oblivious of many 
things, but our recollection of the soul-stirring event it 
has but little dimmed. Almost as if it were yesterday 
we recall how the hearts of all patriots of the land were 
thrilled — how the homes of all combatants of either 
side breathed with sensation of relief in that hour of 
supreme victory. It came after four years of continu- 
ous strife on land and sea — after the shock and strain 
of more than two thousand battles — after an expendi- 
ture of blood and treasure appalling to contemplate — 
after a conflict so vast in proportions that it fixed the 
attention of the world; and yet how quietly it came at 
last! 

The calm, modest correspondence that ended April 9, 
1865, in the surrender of Lee, and the ceremonials of 
the field tjhat ensued, so unmarked by customary show 

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DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 

and blare, seemed at first thought all out of proportion 
to the magnitude of the struggle that then drew to its 
close. The pomp and circumstance of war were so put to 
blush by the magnanimity and unostentation of the con- 
queror, in the final scene of the prolonged hostilities, 
that for the moment the victory had semblance of the 
commonplace. It took a little time to penetrate the 
greatness of the victor's soul and comprehend the 
achievement. The warrior's nobility, unparalleled in 
the annals of warfare, was to the ordinary apprehen- 
sion a kind of infirmity shading the glory of the tri- 
umph. Men paused as if inquiring whether all the out- 
lay, contention and uproar which had convulsed the 
nation ought to terminate without some imposing dis- 
play there on the field — some triumphal manifesta- 
tion, emphasizing the accomplishment ere the curtain's 
fall on the mighty drama. 

But presently, as surprise pondered a little, the dis- 
appointment, such as it was, flamed into admiration, 
and men clearly saw how the splendor of the victory 
was enhanced by the abnegation and simplicity of the 
victorious chieftain. It was seen that a war waged, as 
was that of the government, against a domestic foe and 
purely in the interests of liberty and humanity, ought 
to end precisely as Grant the Great ended it — in the 
spirit of absolute brotherhood, without other humilia- 
tion to the vanquished than the defeat, and with an ex- 
ercise of generosity as great as possible, consistently with 
high public duty. And so ended the war of the rebellion, 

101 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM * 

or, as we may better call it in this later time, the Civil 
Commotion which re-cemented in the bonds of a more 
perfect union the United States of America. 

It was for "a more perfect union" that the founders 
of the Republic framed the Constitution, and in the 
adoption thereof the object was attained so far as pecu- 
liar conditions would then permit. But the slavery 
which the Constitution recognized and protected was 
a growing canker that kept the Union imperfect and in 
constant peril of dissolution. The suppression of the 
rebellion, in the providence of God, turned out to be 
another and more masterful movement to perfect the 
Union. It blotted out slavery as the exciting motive 
for disunion. It extinguished what was at once the dan- 
ger and the disgrace of the nation. A rarity, sute, in 
national experience ! In all history, sacred or profane, 
what more notable for contemplation than that a tre- 
mendous war should rise within a great country for the 
two-fold purpose of disrupting it and perpetuating an 
enormous evil, and result in the total extinguishment 
of the iniquity and the complete unity of the war-torn 
and bleeding country itself! 

Such was the magnificent outcome of our civil con- 
flict. Little wonder that all the people of the land, the 
vanquished along with the victors, should ultimately 
rejoice with exceeding joy. Looking back a generation, 
lo! what increasing cause there appears for gratitude 
and for pride not vain ! The retrospect constrains us to 
admiration, so swarming the changes, enterprises and 

102 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 

accomplishments which have followed in the wake, so 
to speak, of that decisive event of the Surrender. So 
phenomenal, indeed, our national growth and develop- 
ment since the indivisibility of the Republic was assured 
and the Proclamation of Emancipation became emanci- 
pation in fact, that one all but feels as if the continent 
itself, conscious and impatient, had been waiting for 
the day of Appomattox to rise and demonstrate to 
mankind the wondrous capacity of a country under the 
benign influences of a flag whose colors should mean all 
that the Declaration of Independence declared — all 
that it declared touching the equality of man and man's 
inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness. 

The national development is the more observable, 
not to say startling, if we keep in mind the grievous 
waste and desolation of the war, and the extraordinary 
interest-bearing debt and pension liability thereby in- 
curred as a national burden to be borne. Despite these 
impediments, necessitating onerous taxation, there 
has been a progress, steady and rapid, along nearly 
all the lines that lead to a rounded prosperity. In 
population it has been from three and thirty millions, 
say, to more than seventy millions; in valuation 
assessed, approximately, from thirteen to thirty bil- 
lions; in statehood, from thirty-six to forty -five stars 
in the field of blue, with islands now of the sea, let us 
hope, ere long to be stars in the republican firmament; 
in mileage of railway from thirty -five to one hundred 

103 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

and eighty thousand miles, the increase including 
those unsurpassed stretches of mountain-climbing 
route that lock ocean to ocean; a mileage equal to 
forty per cent of the total of both hemispheres. Not 
less striking has been the increase in the value of 
manufactures, and generally of the products of in- 
dustry; of exports and imports; while the vast na- 
tional debt of $2,680,647,869 which had rolled up at 
the close of the war has, without jar or strain, been 
reduced in the sum of $870,000,000, not reckoning 
late extraordinary expenditures; in the meantime over 
two and a half billions in interest having been paid 
on the public debt and over two billions in pensions; 
to which add, leaving out of account the cost of the 
war just closed, other ordinary expenditures of the 
government amounting to some five billions — sums 
of money incomprehensible in any of our ante-bellum 
calculations of governmental expenditure. 

Keeping pace with this march of material progress 
have been the activities in the domain of pubhc instruc- 
tion, education, scientific research, art, invention, 
discovery, and the diffusion of knowledge. The system 
of free public schools, while expanding proportionally 
to the growth of population, has been enriched by a 
multitude of improvements answering to the ever- 
increasing demands of experience, in methods of in- 
struction, variety of study, classification, apparatus, 
and in the convenience, elegance and comfort of the 
school-house. Other schools of private enterprise in 

104 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 

number baffling estimate, preparatory, commercial, 
technical and the like, have sprung up and flourish as 
added proof of the universality of elementary and mul- 
tifarious culture. Nor less pronounced is the increase 
in the higher institutions of learning. Including such 
colleges and universities only as take principal rank, 
the number is safely placed at four hundred. Of these 
full forty per cent date their organization since 1865. 
Within the last decade, as a distinct accession to the 
college, has been inaugurated the system of university 
extension, greatly widening the scope of its educational 
influence. 

As the complement of this array of schools of near 
every grade and shade are the libraries which in late 
years have so grown in number and volume; and other 
productions of the press seen in the amazing multi- 
plicity of periodicals and journals, so out-reaching in 
enterprise, so copious in illustration — the dailies 
reflecting as from a mirror set in the heavens the 
occurrences of the world below, and the weeklies whose 
oflBce is to espouse and promote special industries and 
interests. 

Equally, if not more, noteworthy have been the 
achievements of invention and discovery, which have 
expedited the processes of labor, changed the courses 
of business, multiplied the branches of' industry, 
enhanced the facilities of travel and communication, 
revolutionized the enginery of war, augmented the 
phases of social life and released life itself from many 

105 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

a condition of severity, pain and peril; and other tri- 
umphs of mind so startling to sense, which have added 
to photography the marvel of the biograph, picturing 
scenes in all the realism of action — the rushing loco- 
motive, the pageantry of parade, and Niagara in its 
awful roll, foam and plunge; and added to print, the 
miracle of speech, anthem and encore, stored for re- 
utterance in any clime, and perchance in ages unborn. 
Meanwhile, as these advances have been made in 
the material prosperity, educational conditions and 
social betterment of the nation, what a passing away 
we have to note of those who were active in the mili- 
tary and naval service during the great struggle for 
national life! Of near two millions of soldiers and 
sailors of the Union army and navy, surviving at the 
dawn of peace, not less than a million, probably more, 
are now numbered with the dead. The leaders, save 
a few, are all gone to the other shore. Grant, the in- 
comparable captain of armies, the brilliant, chivalric 
Sherman, whose devotion to his chief was only equalled 
by his chief's loyalty to him, the intrepid, irresistible 
Sheridan, Meade, the hero of Gettysburg, Thomas, 
"the Rock of Chickamauga," Logan, "the Prince of 
Volunteers," Hancock, Halleck, Pope, Rawlins, Ander- 
son, Kilpatrick, Burnside, McClellan, Hooker, Fre- 
mont, Custer, Hayes, Terry, Gresham, Rosecrans, 
Banks, Butler, Hinks, Devens, Walker, Porter, Dahl- 
gren, Dupont, Rodgers, Farragut, the fearless, whose 
fame even by that of Dewey, the Don-destroyer, is 

106 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 

uneclipsed, Gushing, the daring youth, whose exploit 
on the Roanoke is unmatched by the heroism of Hob- 
son in the fiery mouth of Santiago — these, these and 
many more whose names are familiar, have joined the 
host of disenthralled spirits in the Grand Army above. 

Mark, too, the leave-taking of those who were con- 
spicuous in Gabinet, Congress, and other high positions 
of civic trust during the strife. Besides the immortal 
President and commander-in-chief, the martyr whose 
martyrdom so sanctified and subdued the paeans of 
peace, we recall Sumner, Chase, Seward, Stanton, 
Stevens, Chandler, Wilson, Cameron, Dix, Fessenden, 
Andrew, Morton, Adams, Garfield, Wade, Wheeler, 
Conkling, Bingham, Morrill of Maine, Anthony, 
Arthur, Conness, Trumbull, Frelinghuysen, Morgan, 
Randall, Washburne, Hamlin, Colfax, Blaine, Dana, 
and more than these who, let us believe, are still 
watching the course of the Ship of State they did so 
much in guiding over the perilous sea of the war-time. 

Nor should we omit mention of those departed 
heroes who, upon the platform, in the pulpit and the 
press, did such valiant work in shaping public opinion 
both before and during the clash of arms : — Beecher : 
remember his voice in Great Britain, not to speak of 
his trumpet-tongued appeals at home; Garrison: con- 
sider his steadfastness that would not retreat an inch 
and would be heard; Phillips: recall his electrical elo- 
quence and all the force of his resplendent genius laid 
on the altar of humanity's cause; Pillsbury, the sledge- 

107 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

hammer of abolition; Douglass, born a slave, and a 
giant born to shake the system degrading his race; and 
others less famous, but not less steel-true, who had 
the courage of burning conviction to take unalterable 
stand against the monstrous wrong of human bondage. 
These, the great anti-slavery agitators, the foremost in 
the fray, the pioneers of emancipation who fought 
a life-long fight for the sake of pure principle and 
down-trodden humanity; undismayed by calumny, 
ridicule, stripes and ostracism, have one by one, their 
work finished as never reformers' before, passed from 
the scenes of their moral heroism and are fixed as stars 
in the pantheon of history. 

And lo! while all this various growth and evolution 
of the nation and change in its personnel have been 
going on, how nature has done her gracious work in 
healing the wounds and obliterating the scars of the 
transcendent struggle which, through inscrutable 
Providence, raised an erring and hesitating people to 
larger and better life! Look, where erst the land was 
fretful with imaged menaces of war in fortress, bas- 
tion, breast-work, mound, magazine, trench, and pit. 
Leveled or sunk now by the hand of time or sloped 
beyond the trace of outline are those barriers of hostile 
forces, while over them all are grown the sodded grass, 
the thicket and the shade-bearing tree. Scattered even 
or decayed, almost beyond recognition of the horrid 
spot, are the frowning stockades and other dire memen- 
tos of the unspeakable wretchedness of Andersonville. 

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DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 

So kind nature hastens to eflface the physical evidences 
of man's ill-nature to man. How, too, has she softened 
the personal and sectional animosities of men against 
one another arrayed in deadly combat; and assuaged 
the griefs of the myriad hearts afflicted by loved ones 
lost in the prolonged encounter until enmity, its vision 
clarified, has warmed into brotherhood, and the sorely 
stricken, with widened horizon of view, seeing to what 
good end the sacrifice, have grown reconciled and 
rejoice. 

Behold also, to crown the change, another genera- 
tion on the stage, active and in large degree dominant 
in the control of public and other affairs — in admin- 
istration, legislation, business, management, the pro- 
fessions, and the great work of education, whether 
through the schools or the press. The war of the re- 
bellion is over ! In far fuller, higher, deeper sense than 
that in which the politician has sent up the cry — 
the war is over. 

What then? Shall we not still observe Memorial 
Day? Shall we not still strew flowers on the graves of 
departed patriots? Shall we not still recall their 
heroism in discourse and celebrate it in song? Invol- 
untarily we revolt at the thought of any neglect so to 
honor their memory and attest our gratitude. Not 
too late then is it, in manifestation of the same senti- 
ment, to build enduring monuments of granite and 
bronze. 

Without implying any prematurity in the erection 
109 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

soon after the war of monuments to soldiers who fell 
in the service, it is worthy inquiry whether delay in 
commemorating noble deeds, so far from being danger- 
ous, may not be more efficacious for the object in view. 
It was fifty years after the battle before the corner- 
stone was laid of Bunker Hill Monument, and sixty- 
eight years before its completion. It was forty-eight 
years after the death of the Father of his country before 
the corner-stone was laid of the Washington Monu- 
ment, and eighty-five ere its dedication. The shaft at 
Tarry town which commemorates the loyalty of Pauld- 
ing, Williams, and Van Wert, who frustrated the trea- 
son of Benedict Arnold and perhaps saved the cause 
of the Revolution, was not erected till some seventy 
years after the act of their incorruptible patriotism. 
It is in late years that the men and deeds of the revo- 
lutionary time have been most remembered in shaft, 
statue and tablet; and it would seem all the better that 
the Revolutioners and their immediate descendants 
left us so much to do in monumental work. It is alto- 
gether questionable whether it would have been as well 
for us if, within a few years after the Civil War, all 
had been done that meritorious service required in the 
erection of visible memorials; for, however, when once 
built, they may stand as enduring object-lessons to 
inculcate the virtue of loyalty to country and other 
duty, there is much to be considered in the effect upon 
the youth of the land who may see the monuments 
rise, witness their dedication, and be thereby led to a 

110 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 

closer study and understanding of the history they 
point to and illustrate. The youth who beholds the 
towering shaft at Washington may know from his 
books what the imposing column means; but he who 
in childhood observed the dedicatory display and heard 
the speech of the people at the time, has received a 
more lasting impression. 

It was my fortune as a boy to witness the demon- 
stration on the occasion of the completion of Bunker 
Hill Monument. I saw the people swarming in pro- 
cession and crowd as they poured from Boston over 
to Charlestown. Then I saw the few venerable sur- 
vivors of the battle, bowed and decrepit, as they 
tottered up to seats upon the stage, and I heard the 
shouting of the multitude, like the roar of many waters, 
in salutation of their appearance — applause louder 
far than greeted the President of the United States or 
the great orator of the day; and I cannot doubt that 
my appreciation, whatever it may be, of the signifi- 
cance of the majestic pillar, "the powerful speaker 
that stood motionless" before the assembled thousands 
on that joyous day, has ever been deeper and keener 
by reason of what I then saw and heard. I have 
never beheld the stately structure from the passing 
train or from steamer in the harbor, or from other 
point of view, but I have thought of the grandeur of 
the scene, and of the old tottering soldiers, on the re- 
nowned hill, as the most observed part of it; and though 
I did not hear the famous oration of Webster, I have 

111 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

repeatedly read it with livelier and warmer attention, 
moved by that incident of my boyhood. Great lessons 
are often carried through the eye to the mind. Not 
seldom are they all the more impressive and invigorat- 
ing when a community after a long lapse of time, 
rousing its recollection of some past heroism, takes 
fresh mental hold of it and brings it to public view in 
visible celebration. 

Let it not then be said or thought that the people 
of Uxbridge are in any just sense dilatory in erecting 
yonder monument in memory of her soldiers. Much 
less be it said, if perchance any have ventured the 
remark, that there has been anything like shameful 
neglect. Inapplicable the adage, "better late than 
never." Our thought rather is, better now than ever. 
Better that the rising generation, whose clattering 
footsteps are just now on the stage of school-life, 
should be thus affirmatively directed to the lessons 
which the monument we dedicate to-day is designed 
to instil and enforce. Their late predecessors in the 
schools were more within hearing of echoes of the war 
and under the spell and influence of its traditions, 
while tradition was less vague and shadowy. Had the 
monument been built a decade or more ago, the chil- 
dren of to-day would indeed observe it in its place and 
in the common course of education know the purposes 
of it, but they would be without the peculiar inspira- 
tion they will ever feel from having had hand and 
heart in the memorial work, contributing their mites 

112 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 

to the cost, watching the progress of the movement and 
sharing with their elders in the general joy of this hour 
that comes of a public duty done. All honor to those 
who have been foremost and indefatigable in their 
efforts to cause the comely structure to rise there in 
its appropriate place. They may be assured that their 
work will live after them. 

What now, in a word, is the story of great interest 
which the people of the town seek by this act of com- 
memoration to keep fresh in mind as a salutary remem- 
brance for themselves and to hand down for an inspi- 
ration to those who shall come after them? The hour 
admits but a glance at the record. 

At a time when republican government was little 
other than a tale of the past and a dream of the future, 
our forefathers of the American Colonies, animated 
by a lofty spirit of liberty and seeing liberty in peril, 
declared their independence of the monarchical reign 
of the parent country and projected the formation of 
a republic. A long war ensued, during which their bold 
enterprise was often on the perilous edge of failure; 
but at length, after heroic endurance and prodigious 
sacrifice, aided at a critical period by the friendly 
oflfices of a foreign power, their independence as a 
people was recognized and the United States of 
America became one of the nations of the globe. Then 
it was presently seen that the government, which had 
proved equal to the exigencies of the Revolution, was 
inadequate for the purposes of commerce, currency, 

113 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

taxation, and other functions of nationhood. To 
remedy these grave defects it became imperative to 
form a constitution, vesting in the general government 
a sovereignty supreme, in important concerns, over 
that of the several states. What a task was here, to 
reconcile the rivalries and jealousies of the thirteen 
parties to the Union, each a proud state itself, repre- 
senting such different localities, such diverse local 
interests. Above all, what a problem to be solved was 
that one alone which grew out of conflicting views on 
the question of slavery, a system planted in the soil 
in early colonial time, but become repugnant to north- 
ern sentiment, yet deemed identical with southern 
welfare. Statesmen never had a more arduous task 
than the solution of this problem in the interests of 
mankind. However we may wish that the solution 
had been different, we are bound, in the light of his- 
tory and the final outcome, to believe that the best 
thing was done that then could be done in the cause 
of constitutional representative government. In com- 
promised form and as a necessary condition of com- 
pact, the evil of slavery was recognized as an interest 
to be protected by constitutional provision, and the 
Constitution, framed at last through mutual conces- 
sions, was, after much serious discussion, adopted by 
the requisite number of states and the ship of the 
Republic was fairly launched on the sea of national 
life. 

Though deemed an experiment and one loudly dis- 
114 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 

trusted without and somewhat within, the novel nation 
was not unprosperous from the start. Indeed, it soon 
commanded admiration abroad and was the rising 
pride of its devoted founders. It was hailed by the 
oppressed of European peoples as the harbinger of a 
new and better era for the race of men. It grew apace 
in population, wealth, strength, influence, public con- 
fidence and in all the attributes that constitute a 
potential nationality. The daring deed of the Declara- 
tion, defying the proud power of the British crown, 
was a revelation of human possibilities to untold 
millions struggling in hope for the dawn of a brighter 
day. The brilliance of this star of empire in the west 
attracted the gaze of the kingdoms and tribes of the 
earth, and the interest in civilization and human 
progress was largely transferred from the eastern to 
the western hemisphere. 

Yet was this stately ship of state obnoxious to ani- 
madversion, censure, taunt, such as no ingenuity of 
logic or plausibility of ethics could silence; for whereas 
it floated at the masthead the flag of freedom, it carried 
beneath the shining banner a race of slaves. No states- 
manship could long be equal to the successful naviga- 
tion of such a craft — a craft so emblazoned, yet so 
burdened, among whose owners there prevailed and 
increasingly prevailed a conflict of sentiment as to the 
moral propriety and principle of right involved in flying 
the banner of liberty over a deck spot-stained and iden- 
tified with the enormity of involuntary servitude. Espe- 

115 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

cially was this apparent when those who favored the 
thraldom came with surpassing boldness to insist, as 
they did, that either they should be permitted to fortify 
and extend the bondage and hold the helm or they 
would scuttle the ship. This insistence on the part of 
the slave propagandist precipitated the issue, more 
sharply defined perhaps than ever before, of liberty in 
death-struggle with slavery. On this momentous issue 
was begun and fought out the war of the rebellion, the 
civil strife of four years' duration, vast in its propor- 
tions, intense in the heat of its battles, measureless in 
its cost of treasure spent and hearts torn, but ending in 
"joy unspeakable and full of glory." Not the sheer 
glory of martial triumph, of warrior over warrior in 
ambitious fight for spoils, power, and personal supre- 
macy, but the glory that glowed on the victorious ban- 
ner of the Union arms at Appomattox, whereon could 
be read as in letters of heavenly light all and what only 
the bleeding nation had contended for — the imity of 
the Republic under a constitution so amended and 
enlarged as to be co-equal in its scope with the Decla- 
ration of Independence. 

The war of 1861 to 1865 ! In grateful memory of the 
soldiers of this town who bravely served in that war, so 
beneficent and far-reaching in results, we dedicate yon- 
der monument. 

As I pause for a moment to measure the significance 
of our action to-day, my thought reverts to a similar 
act of commemoration some two generations ago, the 

116 



DEDICATION OF SOLDIERS' MONUMENT 

constant educational influence of which upon the mind 
of the local community in keeping alive the flame of 
patriotic sentiment and reverential respect for heroic 
effort in a noble cause, it is not quite easy to estimate. 
In one of the eastern towns of the state sixty -four years 
ago there was erected a plain, unpretentious shaft in 
memory of the seven sons of the town who sixty years 
before fell at Lexington in the first armed encounter of 
the Revolution. It stands near by the town's principal 
thoroughfare and near the populous border of the his- 
toric city of Salem. It is impressive to take thought of 
the countless multitudes who, in passing along the busy 
way in the three score and four years past, have beheld 
that memorial of the early patriotism of those who died 
that there might rise for the weal of their fellow- 
men and their posterity, this majestic structure of 
republican liberty. 

In less degree for public view, but with equal motive 
for salutary effect we have placed on the old-time 
Green, hard by our chief highway, the memorial that is 
to commemorate the patriotism of those whose soldier 
service contributed to the completion of our republican 
liberty. There will it stand in attestation of our simple 
duty as citizens to perpetuate the memory of their devo- 
tion as soldiers. There will it stand in summer's heat 
and winter's cold, as the rains descend and the snows 
fly, in cloud and sunlight, in the rush of day and the 
silence of night, and through all the vicissitudes of the 
passing year, through all the varying fortunes, let us 

117 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

hope, whatever they may be, of the state and the na- 
tion in many, many years to come. The citizens of the 
community, the scholars of the schools, the visitor, the 
traveller, the stranger, shall contemplate this me- 
morial tribute of the townspeople and, as they note the 
names, in enduring letters, inscribed thereon, and re- 
mark the reason of the inscription, be it theirs to take 
increased devotion to the cause of that government 
whose nature and genius are always best expressed in 
those words, forever famous for their felicity, the words 
of the immortal Lincoln : government of the people, by the 
people, for the people. 



TWO UNWRITTEN CHAPTERS OF HISTORY ^ 
Chapter I 

THE YELLOW FEVER AT NEW BERN 

There are, it is said, in the story of every war always 
more or less unwritten chapters, certain occurrences 
or incidents, even eventful circumstances sometimes, 
which, though they may hold a lasting place in the 
memory of those who were cognizant of them, have 
little or no place in the books historic of the war itself. 

An incident may turn the tide of battle and escape 
not only the notice of the general in command, but, 
later, the research of the historian himself, whose work 
will thus be minus the vital fact or influence determin- 
ing the particular event recorded. 

It is said by good authority that the fate of the battle 
of Gettysburg, at a critical stage in that tremendous 
clash of arms, hung on a spider's single thread. How 
easily the sharpest sight from the best point of view 
might have failed to detect the slender thread ! 

A recent publication, a pamphlet written by a 
gallant staff-oflBcer who figured heroically in that 

^ Being a paper given before the Massachusetts Commandery, 
Military Order of the Loyal Legion, at Boston, April 6, 1910. 

119 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

decisive battle, but was killed in a subsequent engage- 
ment, written not with any view to publication, but 
in letters to his brother solely in brotherly corre- 
spondence and all within less than a week after the 
mighty combat, has attracted much notice. The let- 
ters were edited and first published for a limited circu- 
lation by the writer's classmates of Dartmouth Col- 
lege. This commandery, as you are aware, not long 
ago issued a larger edition of the pamphlet, and it is 
being widely read and greatly admired. Brilliant, 
precise, intelligent, and eloquent in description, it is 
likely to hold a high place in army literature. 

In it the author, with words that seem almost to 
have been penned on the sanguinary field itself, points 
as with index finger to the critical point of time in 
Pickett's furious, famous charge when the fate of the 
Union arms, perchance of the very union of the States 
and with it the Stars and Stripes, hung on a spider's 
single thread. Eminent authorities recalling the situa- 
tion have named the then unf amed oflficer, Lieutenant 
Haskell, as the one who discerned the thread and 
rallied disheartened and retreating troops to save the 
day; and it was saved for you and me and the world. 

It is not, however, to such eventful occurrences that 
I am to call attention, but rather to one or two others 
which, though they determined no military result, 
made on the minds of the soldiers of whose experience 
they were a part a deeper impression perhaps than 
anything else in their term of service. 

120 



YELLOW FEVER AT NEW BERN 

While I would not favor a disposition to recall the 
horrible, the sorrowful, the gloomy, the tragic, the 
heart-rending scenes of the war-time; while it would 
seem enough to remember the calamities of war with- 
out fighting over its battles; some benefit may yet 
result from the retrospect if the expression of one's 
remembrances may lead to a detestation of war and 
a purpose to eschew it. With epigrammatic force 
never surpassed General Sherman exclaimed, "War is 
hell!" It follows that everything pertaining to it must 
needs be hellish, even in righteous wars. Only the 
righteousness enables us to endure with patience the 
wretchedness. 

WeU enough it is now and then to glance at the 
hellish features, that we may be stirred to such hatred 
of the murderous business as to shun it henceforth; 
always excepting the case where we may justly take 
arms against some aggressive sea of troubles and by 
opposing end them; or may be stirred, in other words, 
to adopt as an abiding rule of national life that em- 
phatic declaration of Lucien Bonaparte, a brother of 
the great warrior. Napoleon, who in his memoirs near 
fourscore years ago thus wrote : — 

"War, excepting the case of legitimate defence, that 
is to say, unless it be made for the welfare of one's 
country and in defence of its homes, is simply a bar- 
barity, a ferocity, which differs from that of savages 
and ferocious beasts only by greater skill, deceit and 
futility in its object." 

121 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

That from a Bonaparte — a voice of peace from a 
belligerent zone that may well kindle a fresh flame of 
arbitration in this later time of peace congresses. 

The only motive I have in the narratives I am about 
to submit to you, apart from whatever information 
they may convey, is to excite or increase your detesta- 
tion of war, if for a moment I may presume that yours 
is any less than my own. 

As every old soldier is apt to be, so now and then I 
have been asked what principal battle of the war I 
was in. My answer has been, "The battle of the 
Yellow Fever at New Bern, North Carolina, in 1864"; 
in which the mortality, including the death-list of 
non-combatants, according to a moderate estimate 
by those who should best know, was greater than the 
mortality, on the Union side, in many an engagement 
that takes rank among the historic battles of our civil 
conflict. 

The epidemic I am to speak of began its rage in the 
sultry time of the last week of August and did not 
wholly subside till the approach of November. I have 
no language to describe the scenes which, in common 
with some of my comrades, I witnessed during that 
period of seven or eight weeks; much less the sensa- 
tions experienced — the apprehension, the suppressed 
excitement, the gloom, the grief, the discouragement, 
the emotions, at times, of despair. It was my fortune 
to be one of the comparatively few commissioned 
oflScers who were able to keep on their feet for duty 

122 



YELLOW FEVER AT NEW BERN 

throughout the pestilence, and as a consequence I saw 
more of its ravages than most others. That the scenes 
I witnessed, of distress, of sorrowing and woe, of help- 
lessness and hopelessness, are well engraved on my 
memory, should, I think, be readily believed. Often 
even now, in the visions of night, pictures rise before 
me as I beheld them during the weary prevalence of 
that insidious distemper, when the troops stationed in 
and about the city, including a portion of the second 
Massachusetts Heavy Artillery of which I was a poor, 
but I trust not unfaithful soldier, were shut up as 
within a stockade, cut off, not unlike prisoners within 
dungeon-walls, from all communication with home 
and the rest of the world, except as the government 
for the sheer necessities of the service permitted 
occasional inlet and outlet. 

I remember the heat and the dust of the time, the 
anxieties and perplexities of the situation, the tireless 
efforts made, the resident population, such as remained 
after the evacuation, resolutely joining hands with us 
to stay the desolating pestilence; the rank vegetation 
that largely encompassed the town, and the labor of 
cutting, drying and burning it, to dissipate the miasma 
infesting the air; the policing of the streets, yards and 
pest-holes; the precautions taken to avoid unnecessary 
contact with the disease; how all who could be on 
duty had to do double service; how the surgeons, 
galloping from camp to camp and from hospital to 
hospital, bearing what comfort they might to the sick 

123 



^mXHUR A. PUTNAM 

and dying, were painfully overworked, some of them 
falling victims to the very malady they would relieve. 

To bring the matter quite near home, I may mention 
the case of Dr. Dixi C, Hoyt of Milford. He was 
assistant surgeon of our Massachusetts Artillery. He 
was a jovial, cheerful spirit and one of the most active 
and efficient surgeons of the time. The gallop of his 
horse and the good-nature of his face brought cheer 
to the men whenever he appeared in camp. Nearly 
all through the trying visitation he was indefatigable 
in ministering to the sick and in kind offices to soothe 
the dying; but when the fever had all but abated, he 
was attacked by it and died in less than twenty-four 
hours. 

I remember, ah! I remember, how the new graves 
lined up in long rows in a fresh burial-ground set apart 
in a suburban field; how ever and anon on the way 
thither the muffled drum was heard, yet only when a 
detail of soldiers could be spared for escort to the corse 
of a departed officer; how care would be taken every 
night to select a guard for the morrow that might hold 
out for a twenty-four-hours' duty, but how apt its ranks 
were to be decimated by disability ere the day's work 
was over; how once, when it fell to me to be officer of 
the day, the guard at the morning inspection seemed 
all right; yet on going the rounds at midnight two men 
of it were found dead in the guard-house who at the 
inspection handled their muskets with every sign of 
bodily vigor. So suddenly and in volleys did the archer 

124 



YELLOW FEVER AT NEW BERN 

let fly his arrows in those days, weeks, of the yellow 
fever at New Bern. 

I recall how once in a while it would come over me 
that those soldiers who were thus laid low in hospital, 
tent, and by the wayside, were dying a rather inglori- 
ous death; falling not in sight of the enemy, not in the 
heat and exhilaration of the fray, not facing danger 
visible as musketry and the cannon's mouth and 
audible as the fierce rolling wave of combat, but falling 
before the plague that walks unseen, powerless to 
ward off peril by arms however aggressive or valor 
however indomitable, and in their solitudinous leave- 
taking of comrades ungladdened by any parting word 
from familiar lips or any glimpse of the starry Flag 
they went forth from their homes to uphold. 

But on second thought it would come to me that 
they died in the service and the line of duty just where 
command had placed them, and, though opportunity 
was not theirs for any display of zeal and gallantry 
in the final hour, they should yet have their country's 
praise equally with the heroes who breathed their last 
rushing in the furious charge or carrying on high the 
colors in the clash and smoke of the fight; equally with 
the hardy braves who fell at a Cold Harbor, a Chan- 
cellorsville, a Chickamauga, a Gettysburg, or in the 
Wilderness, where Grant in the coolness of his sagacity 
and the loyalty of his soul fought it out to final tri- 
umph at Appomattox; equally almost, shall I not say.'' 
with those who, gnawed by hunger, cuffed by insult, 

125 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

and mocked by the monumental meanness of a Wirz, 
wasted and perished in the unspeakable pen of Ander- 
sonville. 

Such in brief, very imperfect in detail and descrip- 
tion, is the story of the yellow fever at New Bern in 
the great war-time; an unwritten chapter of history, 
for in vain have I looked in the books for any account 
of the calamity that is at all adequate. There are no 
definite data to determine the number of deaths even 
of the soldiers who were stricken down by the plague, 
much less of residents of the city who so died. In the 
confusion and distraction of the time officers may not 
have kept sufficient records, or, if kept, the returns did 
not clearly show what losses were from the fever and 
what, if any, from other causes; while in the city, 
which was under martial law, no one not a soldier 
appears to have concerned himself to guess at the 
number of civilians who so died. Estimates by ob- 
serving officers, — including my good old careful Colonel 
Frankle, very justly at the close of his service a briga- 
dier-general by brevet, and who, in the absence of 
General Palmer, was in command of the defences of 
New Bern throughout the melancholy period, — place 
the number of soldier deaths at not less than four 
hundred. No conjecture, I think, should rate the 
mortality among non-combatants in and about the 
city at less than one hundred and fifty — a total of 
five hundred and fifty deaths from the fever, or an 
average of about twelve a day; more than the loss on 

126 



YELLOW FEVER AT NEW BERN 

the American side in any of the battles of the Revo- 
lution, four alone excepted — Brandywine, German- 
town, Hubbardton and Camden. 

Authentic statistics name twelve principal battles 
of the Civil War, figuring their importance, or, if not 
their importance, their deadliness, from the number 
of deaths in battle on the Union side. Of these twelve 
Gettysburg heads the list, with a loss in battle of 3070, 
and Fredericksburg is at the foot of the list, with a 
loss of 1284, Of the two thousand and more battles 
of the war, the bloodshed in any case was deemed 
exceptionally large if five hundred men on either side 
were slain. 

Thus the battle of the Yellow Fever, if I may so 
call it, measured by the loss of life, was one of the 
principal engagements of the conflict of '61 to '65. 

Yet when we, the survivors, nine or ten months 
afterward, the cruel war of the rebellion being pretty 
much all over, returned to our homes and neighbor- 
hoods, nobody, hardly anybody, appeared to be aware 
that there had been any battle at all down at New 
Bern. One of my intelligent neighbors, to whom I 
intimated the Httle circumstance as an incident of my 
soldiering, said, "Oh, yes, yes, seems to me I did see 
in some paper or other that you had some yellow fever 
down there. Did n't last long, did it? Not many 
died.''" — "No, lasted only seven or eight weeks; only 
five or six hundred died." That's all the credit we got 
for our yellow fever. 

127 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Attracted, you see, the newspapers were by the brist- 
ling scenes of thunderous combat, and its concomit- 
ant carnage, and, as their readers could read only the 
reports of the reporters, they missed a thing or two of 
what was going on down in Dixie. Hence the unwritten 
chapter which, after the lapse of five and forty years, 
I venture to submit in vague abstract. 

Now, my friends, as for the lesson, if there be one. 
It was at the time of the aflBiction the opinion of some 
United States authorities that the fever was smuggled 
into the city of New Bern in rags and other refuse, as 
an artifice of warfare by the enemy, and those whose 
judgment should have weight have never been quite 
convinced to the contrary. New Bern had not been 
subject to yellow fever, is not in the tier of states to 
be climatically affected by the scourge. That the pest 
was purposely introduced rather than transported, 
as was contended at the time, in clothes from Cuba as 
an act of charity, there is reason to suspect if not to 
believe. Accept the suspicion as a matter of fact, and 
we have another instance, and a notable one, that 
whatever may be said to the contrary, whatever may 
be said of the honor of soldiers in war, — and of honor 
therein there are lofty illustrations: none greater than 
are found in the career of him who sleeps the sleep of 
the noble, magnanimous warrior in the mausoleum on 
the riverside of the majestic Hudson, — whatever may 
be said to the contrary, there is hardly anything in 
strategy or stratagem to which an army will not resort 

128 



A MILITARY EXECUTION 

to overcome its antagonist. The very nature of the 
business cultivates recklessness and heartlessness. 
Anderson ville, Libby, and other prisons are proofs 
enough, but no stronger proofs than that depravity 
which, if it did not in the case of New Bern, has before 
and elsewhere, sundry times, as disclosed by history, 
been known to steal into a city to spread pestilence 
among the soldiers there stationed and the people 
there resident. 

Chapter II 

A MILITARY EXECUTION 

Some six months after the outbreak of the rebellion 
came the first military execution of a Union soldier. 
I recall the sensation that possessed me as I read of the 
killing, and how others, both soldiers and civilians, 
were similarly affected, not to say shocked. That a 
young man who had enlisted in the service of his 
country, not enticed by bounty, but presumably from 
high, patriotic motives as a volunteer, should be shot 
to death by his fellow soldiers, constrained by their 
government so to do, because, overcome by weariness 
in his service, he had fallen asleep as a sentinel on his 
post — such an act of the government seemed un- 
grateful, unnatural, cruel. Why was it done? Why 
had the like been done before? Why is it still done and 
why will it be done so long as war shall last? Because 

129 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

army government is despotism and despotism never 
scruples to do whatever may serve or seem to serve 
its purpose, however inhuman or remorseless the 
deed. It is a happiness, oh! a happiness, to remember 
that the cloud and forked lightning of the despotism 
throughout the clang and service of the Union arms 
was largely relieved by the abounding humanity and 
mercy of Abraham Lincoln. 

When I read of that first military execution, in a 
war waged, if ever one was waged, in national defence 
and in the sacred cause of liberty and humanity, I 
could not but express the hope, as others also did, 
that it might not be my fortune to see a similar spec- 
tacle. Unhappily, however, it became my lot not only 
to witness, but in a measure to be party to the execu- 
tion at once of six fellow soldiers, a larger number, it 
is believed, than were executed at one and the same 
time during the Civil War. The tragedy, for such it 
was in the ending, if not from the very beginning, was 
enacted on Sunday morning a little after sunrise, the 
14th day of August, at New Bern, about two weeks 
before the advent there of the yellow fever that 
wrought the desolation to which attention has just 
been called. To tell the tale of the action is in no wise 
pleasant to the narrator, and the narration should be 
equally unpleasant to the hearer. My only object in 
reviving recollection of the occasion and the blood- 
shed is to excite so far as I may a just execration for 
war. The historian, when he writes of battles, will 

130 



A MILITARY EXECUTION 

tell you in very considerable detail of the marshaling 
of the opposing forces, of the glittering, glistening, de- 
fiant array of the soldiery on either side, of the on- 
slaught and the slaughter. He is expected to do it, 
and unless he does, he is not deemed a careful, pains- 
taking historian, fair and faithful to the fierce fighters. 
A great mortality by a plague, as we have observed, 
he passes over with a stroke of his pen, because he 
sees there no valor or heroism to depict or celebrate. 
If the yellow fever shoots down a half thousand men, 
he says in effect, "A plague on your yellow fever!" 
and passes on to the portrayal of other and grander 
battles by shot and shell. 

So in the histories I have read I have never read a 
detailed account of a military execution. Mentioned it 
may be, stated as a fact. The subject is then dropped 
as if the less said about it the better, and the better sure 
enough in one view. Yet I have found, whenever allud- 
ing in conversation to the military executions about 
to be described, that there has been a decided curios- 
ity to hear somewhat particularly about the ceremony 
and the scene, and very noticeable it has been that the 
particulars have appeared to arouse a fresh aversion 
for war. If a like effect should be here or elsewhere 
produced, I shall not have written in vain. If any 
should regret hearing the tale, I shall regret having 
told it. Heard, it is not likely to be forgotten. After 
five and forty years the impression made upon me 
by indirect participation and actual sight is but little 

131 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

eflFaced. In no degree shall the story be embellished. 
It is enough, simply told. 

On the Sunday morning already mentioned six sol- 
diers were simultaneously executed. Their names could 
be given, but are here withheld: one of a New York 
regiment, two of a Rhode Island regiment, and three of 
a Connecticut regiment, the offence in each case being 
desertion, " Bounty -jumpers " deserters were called, 
as you remember, in those latter war-days; that is, hav- 
ing obtained a bounty, they entered the service and then 
deserted it. Such was the offence and a grave offence 
it was, to be sure. The offenders were all compara- 
tively young men and all had family friends. They 
were imprisoned for several weeks, and until the day 
of their deaths, in the New Bern jail under the general 
charge of the Provost Marshal of the district, — 
Major Lawsonof our Massachusetts regiment; a fine, 
noble-hearted man who sorely felt his responsibility 
and wasted a good deal under the weight of the care. 
Besides superintending all the arrangements for the exe- 
cutions and oflBciating as the chief officer of the occa- 
sion, he was required to be more or less personally 
with the prisoners after their conviction, examining 
their correspondence and assisting in it, and neces- 
sarily hearing their griefs and petitions for mercy. 
When it was all over, the worn and weary Major went 
to the hospital at Beaufort, and not long thereafter 
died of yellow fever. 

The scene of the executions was the large plain in 
132 



A MILITARY EXECUTION 

front of Fort Totten, that is, beyond it as you ap- 
proached the fort from the city, Totten being the large 
fort on the elevated western outskirt of the city and 
about a mile from the city jail. Always at an execu- 
tion the regiment of the convict and such other 
troops as can be well spared are paraded on the 
shooting-ground, that they may be impressed and 
awed by the spectacle — the parade forming three sides 
of a square, the alignment on each side being in two 
ranks, the open side, called the open field, being in the 
direction of the shooting. 

Early on the August Sunday morning, the dawn of a 
hot, sultry, breezeless day, the reveille sounded and all 
the troops detailed for the parade were at once in mo- 
tion, presently in company order to march to the plain. 
As they were leaving their respective camps to parade 
thereon in the manner indicated, the strains of the dead 
march were heard, faintly away down in the city, gradu- 
ally becoming more and more distinct. The solemn pro- 
cession had left the jail and was slowly moving toward 
the deadly plain. It consisted of the six convicts in an 
uncovered wagon, followed by six coffins in a wagon 
and six clergymen in carriages, escorted by forty sol- 
diers, armed and equipped, marching in rectangle en- 
closing the convicts, the coffins and the clergymen, the 
cortege under command of the Provost Marshal. 

As the procession drew near the sally-port of the Fort, 
through which was the entrance to the plain, it was 
halted and reformed. The coffins were taken each upon 

133 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

the shoulders of four unarmed men, formed into line 
as of two ranks. The prisoners left the wagon and were 
formed also in two ranks in rear of their coflBns, each 
prisoner accompanied by a clergyman. The escort 
then formed as before in rectangle, the band resumed 
its position in advance, and preceded by the Provost 
Marshal in full uniform, — with sheathed sword, tall, 
slender and pale from overwork and a keen sense of of- 
ficial obligation, — the procession moved to the music 
of common time, and was soon within the great square 
described on three sides by the alignment of about 
three thousand soldiers. It proceeded with that slow, 
measured step that marks the time of the dirge to the 
upper side of the square, opposite the open field, where 
were six open graves in a row, several feet from one 
another. Then the procession halted again and the 
music ceased. In the stillness of the hour, not a breath 
of air stirring, every voice, every movement there at the 
place of action could be easily heard by the attentive 
but uneasy audience. 

The coffins were placed each at the foot of a grave 
and in line with it. The prisoners were seated each on 
the foot of his open coffin. The escort was divided into 
six shooting squads of six men each, with a reserve of 
four or more men, each squad having six muskets, five 
loaded with ball and one with blank cartridge, no man 
knowing whether his piece carried ball or cartridge only. 
The shooting squads took position, each eight paces 
from a prisoner and facing him as he sat on his coffin. 

134 



A MILITARY EXECUTION 

The Provost Marshal now read aloud the sentence of 
the court-martial, and the order or warrant for the exe- 
cution. With tremulous voice, faltering with emotion, 
the chaplain offered a prayer, and the prisoners were 
blindfolded. The Marshal then took position at the 
right of the line of the shooting squads, sujBiciently in 
advance of it to be distinctly seen, with a white hand- 
kerchief in his hand. As he raised and for a moment 
held it, the soldiers aimed, and as he dropped it, they 
fired. Four of the blindfolded men fell backward into 
their coffins, apparently killed at the instant. The 
other two struggled and writhed and groaned, and not 
till the reserve could be ordered forward, take position, 
receive command and fire, was the misery at an end. 

Here and there along the lines of the soldiery on pa- 
rade men fainted; others were stomach-sick; some reso- 
lutely averted their faces and kept in line, while others 
looked on seemingly unmoved, but so in appearance 
only we must suppose. 

At length, the agony over, the captains of the com- 
panies cried, "Attention! shoulder arms; right, face; 
forward, march"; and to the beat and roll of the drum 
and the ear-piercing fife, they all marched in quick- 
step to their respective quarters, there to ponder and 
wonder for the remainder of the Sabbath and perchance 
for many a day thereafter. 

Far, far, from my object it has been, companions, to 
make this festive occasion funereal in the observance. 

135 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

I have but glanced at some of the shadows that flit 
athwart the sky of recollection, as we recall the crowded 
past in which it was our fortune to figure, as duty 
pointed the way, in the momentous struggle for a united 
and better country. Great as were the griefs in that 
transcendent ordeal, the triumphs outnumbered and still 
outnumber the sorrows. Yea, the heavens that brooded 
over this land and now arch the wide domain were so 
lighted up and are still so illumined by the sun of Ap- 
pomattox that the darknesses of the war are but as 
the specks on the glorious orb of day. We cannot but 
feel that God himself was in it all, and that all the 
losses were lasting, golden gains for common humanity. 



SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S VERSES 

I 
FIFTH ANNIVERSARY^ 

Five years have flown of wedded life, 

And happy all they seem, 
To husband sure, perchance to wife 

Who made them so to him. 

Look back! the time is but a day, 

And yet how long the space, 
If we review the traveled way 

And scan it as we trace : — 

The hours of toil, the hours of chat. 
The thousand wondrous plans. 

The rarity of tit for tat, 
Unmindful of our banns. 

Lowly, in sooth, has been our course. 

Not aiming much to shine, 
Nor borrowing from an alien source 

To flaunt in colors fine. 

* Composed in 1873. 
137 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Early to rest our chosen rule. 

And middling so to rise; 
Our study the art of keeping cool, 

To spare each other's eyes. 

Few Erin maids, or other sort, 

Have domineered our cot; 
For these too simple and too short 

The annals of our lot. 

Nor prancing steeds from cottage side 
Have rolled with us away; 

But now and then we 've ta'en a ride 
Upon a summer day. 

Most time we've led with us along 

"The 'ittle Alley Boy"; 
And he has been a cheering song, 

E'en when he'd most annoy. 

Howe'er he 's tripped upon the road 
And chased for butter-flies. 

He 's lightened every marriage load 
And sweetened all its ties. 

So, thankful for the blessings rare, 
In five years come and gone, 

Of health and hope and joy and care. 
And whatsoe'er is done, 
138^ 



SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S VERSES 

We hail the Future, trusting still 

To Him who reigns on high. 
And what betides, or good or ill, 

As five years next go by, 

The Past, at least, is all secure. 

The little story 's told; 
Excel it ye, who feel too sure, 

A reveling in your gold. 

II 
JENNIE^ 

I KNEW her when a lisping child. 

So lightsome, frank and free; 
And many an hour I was beguiled 

By her simplicity. 

I knew her when a little sprite 

She tripped to school betime; 
And how the very room ran bright 

As Jennie read the rhyme. 

I knew her as she older grew. 

Still younger than the rest, 
And how the prize she ever drew 

For scholarship the best. 

* A feeble tribute to a beloved niece, Jennie Butler Dudley. Com- 
posed in 1876. 

139 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

I knew her in the higher planes 

Of study still pursued; 
And, though she wrought with dainty pains, 

The palm not less was wooed. 

I marked her course what time arose 

Her star along the sky; 
Nor caught a glimmer such as shows 

A ray of vanity. 

I heard them celebrate her mind, 

And marvel at her grace; 
'T would seem as if she thought us blind, 

So consciousless her face. 

I saw the rich her presence crave. 

And fashion's wiles allure; 
But vain their arts to her enslave. 

Who daily blessed the poor. 

More wondrous far, howe'er admired, 

And loved this favorite friend; 
Of all the throng, not one was fired 

An envious shaft to send. 

Her life was spellful as the rays 

Of summer's sunset beam; 
And at the setting of her days. 

The past ran like a dream. 
140 



SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S VERSES 

A dream, too brief, too sweet, to last ! 

Too soon its charms abate. 
And leave our sky all overcast, 

And hearts all desolate. 

O how it seemed, as word rang round. 
That Jennie's breath had fled — 

O how it seemed the very sound 
Would resurrect the dead ! 

To mortal view, to human sense. 
So homeward came the thought. 

That one of such pure influence 
Should longer here have wrought. 

But so she lived, and living, died. 

Beloved of all who knew; 
The pride of all, without a pride. 

Save pride to live life true; — 

To nature true, whom Nature gave 

Her darling gift and rare — 
A beauteous mind, and its frail slave, 

A beauteous dust to wear. 

The diamond worn a sandy hour 

To rayless ashes fades; 
The mind, celestial in its power. 

Forsakes the realm of shades; 
141 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Forsakes, and yet is present there, 
All-seeing, though unseen; 

Pervades with spirit all the air, 
And keeps the memory green. 

What else, when dust to dust returns. 
Prolongs sweet friendship's tie, 

Unless it be some flame that burns 
Throughout eternity? 

Some quality ethereal, 

Unsub jugate to clay; 
And still forever personal 

As in the mortal day? 

Methinks, though vision fails me now. 
But winged by Faith to rise, 

I see the form, the face, the brow. 
And e'en the angel eyes 

Of Jennie changeless, save as grown 

Angelic more and dear; 
And lo ! the voice is still her own — 

I hear it very near ! 

And nearer hear, and nearer still. 

The seraph accents fall; 
And clearer grows my vision till 

I see the Good in All. 



SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S VERSES 

III 
MY OLD VIOLIN ^ 

I HAVE in my house an old violin, 

A hundred years old, I guess; 
In many a dance and choir it has been 

And orchestra more or less. 

Deft fingers sometimes have touched its strings 
That rivaled Ole Bull's in his pride. 

And still in my ears the music rings 
That I heard till I almost cried. 

Not always it has by a master hand 

Been so enlivened to speak; 
More often at mine or other's command 

Its notes have inclined to squeak. 

'T is old, forsooth, but all the more fine, 

As every old fiddler knows : 
For fiddles are like unto ruddy wine. 

The older the better it grows. 

'T is not for sale, the idol I praise, 

But a shekel I venture to bet, 
If here Paganini were round nowadays. 
He 'd buy 't, though it run him in debt. 
* Composed in 1910. 
143 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

O how many waltzes and jigs have been danced 

To this vioHn of my care ! 
What couples past midnight hours have pranced 

In hornpipe and quadrille so fair ! 

What matches near made and even unmade 

It has seen in many a hall ! 
How watched the whirling promenade 

And eyed the belles of the ball ! 

So too in church, when playing the psalm, 
The worshippers it slyly has viewed; 

And never the scene so solemn and calm 
New bonnets its eye would elude. 

To me long ago from a brother it came. 

Who found it all dingy with age 
In a plantation attic ere slavery's shame 

Had ceased its brutal rage. 

'T was minus alike of tailboard and screws 

And bridge and strings every one, 
And polish not a bit it had to lose. 

And o'er it cobwebs were spun. 

"O say," cried my brother to the plantation king, 
"Wilt thou sell me the instrument?" 

"O pshaw! 't is nothing, just take the thing," 
Responded the lordly gent. 
144 



SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S VERSES 

So the teacher, when ready his teaching to quit, 
Far down where the cotton is grown — 

Brought home the fiddle as his luckiest hit 
Of all his southern sojourn. 

In a box as old as itself it is kept, 

At least very old I could swear, 
For there when sleeping the fiddle has slept 

Till the lining is very threadbare. 

Poor box! what a scarcity it shows of paint; 

Pretty much it has vanished from view; 
And on it are knocks that warrant complaint 

For assaults a full score or two. 

No wonder the wear, for traveled a good deal 

It has on land and the sea. 
And a footstool has been in times of the reel 

For the players who played with me. 

'T is not such a one as players now show, 

Very like the fiddle in shape; 
Save rounded ends 't is straight as a row, 

But tapering toward the nape. 

'T is arched a little along the top side 

And thereon is a handle of brass; 
And in it are pockets spare strings to hide, 

And all else of the outfit class. 
145 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Quite new is the bow, but much now impaired 

By forty years' use or so; 
So long it is since I had it re-haired 

There scarce is a hair to the bow. 

But the fiddle, I trow, ah! that is all right. 
And though I play it nevermore. 

If any one thinks that money can buy 't. 
Let a Rockefeller try his out-pour. 

Here ends my poor ditty in memory fond 

Of the dear, dear old VioUn; 
E'en stronger than mine I pray be the bond 

To knit it unto my kin. 



IV 

MY MOTHER 1 

My mother, I remember her, 
Remember her to-day. 
Remember her as well 
As when at boyhood's play 
Where I was used to dwell; 
There 'neath the broad old willow trees, 
And hear their lofty branches stir 
As through them went the summer breeze. 
^ Composed in 1870. 
146 



SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S VERSES 

My mother, I remember how, 

Just how she looked to me; 
The goodness of her face. 
The features all I see, 
And see her in her place, 

There in the quaint old mansion rude; 

And well I mark her thoughtful brow. 

As oft the Good Book she construed. 

My mother, I remember all 
Her unwearying care 
For me and others dear. 
Who did the bounty share 
Of her kind love and cheer; 
What joy would o'er her mild face run, 
What shadow o'er it quickly fall, 
As right or wrong was seen or done. 

My mother, I remember part 
Her busy life and long; 
How toilfuUy she wrought 
With feeble hand or strong. 
Lest she should fail in aught; 
Nor seemed to view her burdens sore. 
Though oft they tried her noble heart, 
Till weary grown past years four score. 

My mother, I remember too, 
Her open hand and free 
147 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

To beggars at the door; 
And, sooth, her charity 
Ofttimes excelled her store; 
For she the poor could ne'er deny, 
E'en though their tale were quite untrue, 
Lest some in need should vainly cry. 

My mother, I remember what 

Was her persuasive speech 
When men, too swift of tongue. 
Their fellows would impeach 
For what unproved was wrong; 

"Nay, spare to chide in hasty phrase; 

Perchance, the truth, full told, will not 

Thy brother blame, but crown with praise!" 

My mother, I remember when 

If sickness laid her low, 

Or other troubles came. 

The patience she would show. 

All trustful in the Name 
She early vowed to reverence; 
What faith she proved in Jesus then — 
How resolute her confidence ! 

My mother, I remember dim 

My childhood's tender days; 
Remember, or do feel. 
The prayers her love did raise 
148 



SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S VERSES 

To guard my future weal : — 
O could I now but faintly test 
Her invocations unto Him, 
My spirit were sin-washed and blest! 

My mother, I remember — no ! 
For memory 't is vain. 
If ever I retrace, 
Nor strive by steps to gain 
The summits of the Place 

Where thou art beckoning me to thee; 

While I, still slothful here below. 

Forget to mind eternity. 

My mother, me remember still. 

In thy orisons pure 

Up near the Heavenly Throne! 

And may thy love allure 

Me there and there alone; 
For more and more I weary here. 
And hopeless am of rest, until 
My soul through grace to God draws near. 



THE PLEASURES OF POETRY 

Not a little embarrassed I feel in responding to your 
invitation to speak of the pleasures of poetry. 

How can any one who is not a poet so discourse? 
Who but a poet can tell what is poetry? If any one but 
a poet essay treatment of the subject, may he not as 
likely descant on the pleasures of prose as poetry, 
unaware of the di^^ding line? Even poets are not 
always agreed where begins or ends the invisible, 
shadowj- hne. Some deny that that is inspired by the 
Muse which others celebrate as the Muse's loftiest 
inspiration. Dryden pronounced the plays of Shake- 
speare "'ridiculous and incoherent stories meanly 
written." Addison noted them as "ven- faulty." 
Dr. Johnson said that the author could not write six 
consecutive lines without fault. Milton censured 
Charles I for making "the Plays and other such stuff 
his daily reading." Tate, poet-laureate of his time, 
styled "Othello," characterized by Macaulay as the 
greatest work in the world, as "a mere thing." And 
Steams said that only an act of Parliament could 
make any one read the Sonnets, Not till within 
a hundred years have the plays, by something like 
consensus of ^-iew, been ranked as master-pieces in the 
realm of dramatic art and poetic genius, while now 

150 



THE PLEASURES OF POETRY 

their rank is questioned by critics not a few who point 
to passages in the works as turgid, dull, overwrought, 
witless, and here and there so unintelligible, that com- 
mentators never cease changing the test to make 
sense. Similar variances of judgment there are re- 
garding the productions of other poets of great repute. 

The explanation of it all would seem to be that 
what is poetry to some is not always such to others, 
or is not till time may have tested the ore and found 
gold. One may reject as prosaic what another may 
accept as poetic; but however minds may diflFer in 
classifying compositions under the heads of poetry 
and prose, there is, it is beUeved, in every soul the 
poetic sentiment that responds to one quality or an- 
other of verse, just as there is music in every soul 
detecting, according to the fashion of one's ear, the 
melodious from the unmelodious and harmony from 
discord. Thus there are poets who never write poetry. 
Yea, in that "fine frenzy" the bard of Avon speaks 
of, there are bards in varying degrees numerous as the 
race of man. Limitless almost they are in the choice 
of authors. 

Some enjoy most a Homer or a Horace, a Milton 
or a Dante, a Goethe or a Coleridge, a Burns or a Byron, 
a Browning or a Tennyson, a Longfellow or a Whittier; 
some, possibly, a Kipling beyond all others who ever 
climbed or strove to climb the arduous heights of 
Parnassus. But whatever the choice, the reader reads 
his favorite author because he finds in him what most 

151 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

appeals to his poetic sentiment, what most satisi5es his 
love of verse, his ideal of style, rhythm, and strain of 
thought. The pleasure of every reader is, I suppose, in 
the proportion he finds his own thoughts, emotions, 
meditations, and aspirations, his own loves, aversions, 
moods, and merriments, aptly or happily expressed. 
What more pleases a reader, not alone in his reading, 
but in his living, than to come upon a passage in a 
book that reflects in felicitous, poetic phrase some 
well-remembered experience, mental or spiritual, of 
his own life; some struggle of his emotions, his sensa- 
tion of joy or sorrow, exaltation or depression of his 
soul; his sense of right in sharp distinction from the 
wrong; his conception of the humorous or the ironic; 
some meditation he may have indulged on the great 
problems of life and death; or that reflects perchance 
that indefinable sensation of joy commingling with 
solemnity, reverence, and gratitude, as he has contem- 
plated the natural world, the scenes of its beauty, the 
manifestations of its grandeur and the evidences of 
its beneficence, yea, the unspeakable impressiveness 
of the visible creation, whether the land, the sea, or 
the heavens above? 

Such portraitures, on the printed page, of his inner 
self, his consciousness, his mental, moral, and spiritual 
condition and experiences, one delights to meet, recall 
and cherish. With them, one holds silent communion 
and in them takes refreshment and repose. Hence men 
and women as well of laborious or busy life, official, 

152 



THE PLEASURES OF POETRY 

professional, commercial or other, resort often to their 
favorite poets for recreation and rest. So Cicero flew 
from the care and stress of the forum to revive his 
spirit, ennoble his nature, and enrich his diction. So 
was he inspired for his immortal defence of the Greek 
poet Archias, to whose voice he could hear the rocks 
and solitudes respond. It matters not whether you 
and I are or may be in accord with the reader. A, B or 
C, as to the phraseology that best versifies his or her 
particular thought, emotion, or conceit. Every one 
judges for himself, catches at the verse, lodges it in 
memory, and as occasion prompts, quotes it in dis- 
course or lisps it in retirement. 

Yet in the vast volume of poesy, olden and recent, 
there are certain passages or lines of the song, the 
ballad, the hymn, the lyric, the drama, the poem, the 
epic, which by a kind of universal assent are exception- 
ally complete in their expressions of human thought 
and feeling as awakened in our relations with the 
world in which we live, move and play our little parts. 
Instances crowd on us for illustration. As the rarest 
are apt to be not uncommon, I make no apology if I 
should use such as may be familiar to your memory as 
well as mine, to intimate some of the pleasures of 
poetry, be it rhyme without wings or verse inspired 
by the muse alike in cadence and flame, caustic or 
ethical, humorous or serene, grave or pathetic, beauti- 
ful, solemn, or sublime in sentiment, or both senti- 
mental and flashing with the fire of imagination. 

153 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Mindful of the infinite pleasure afforded from time 
immemorial to children of the nursery by the drollery 
and jingle of her doggerel, it would hardly seem out 
of course if we should venture here some samples of 
Mother Goose's melodies; but as the congregation is 
but little, if at all, sprinkled with the fancy of child- 
hood, perhaps it were better to omit the Humpty 
Dumpty and the Hey Diddle Diddle, the Old King 
Cole and the Old Mother Hubbard of the dear old 
lady, and address our illustrations rather to the adult 
mind. 

So many gems have I plucked from one mine and 
another, and at one time and another packed away in 
the little satchel of my memory to help me on the 
journey of life, that I am more or less embarrassed 
here, first, because of some abundance of riches, next 
because you and I may differ as to what jewels had 
better be produced from the satchel, and lastly, be- 
cause the limitation of time admonishes me that I 
cannot long have your attention. 

Few things in literature are more satisfactory than 
a bit of verse embodying a truth of world-wide recog- 
nition, so pungent, so epigrammatic as everywhere to 
invite quotation. An example is had in that old, but 
never outworn couplet of Butler in "Hudibras": — 

No rogue e'er felt the halter draw 
But had poor 'pinion of the law. 

Side by side with this famous couplet none may be 
better placed for quotableness than that of him 

154 



THE PLEASURES OF POETRY 

(Whittier) whose verse and sweet memory you cele- 
brate to-night. If other lines should not, these are 
likely to perpetuate the story of "Maud Muller ": — 

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, 

The saddest are these, it might have been. 

If I begin with the law, do not fear that you will 
have much more of it. — The application of course 
being to every one who blames the law when a case 
goes against him, as about everybody does, the world 
all over, including in these latter days the grafter and 
the soulless corporation. 

A pun, if witty, is doubly enjoyable in rhyme. 
Such the one perpetrated by Hood : — 

His death that happened in his berth. 

At forty-odd befell; 
They went and told the sexton 

And the sexton tolled the bell. 

"To be or not to be," quoth Hamlet. To do or not 
to do, that also is the question that must oft give us 
pause lest we do what we would undo and may not 
be able. While an important measure was pending 
in the British Parliament, and debate ran high and 
warm, a wit of the House of Commons rose and said : — 

"I hear a lion in the lobby roar; 
Say, Mr. Speaker, shall we shut the door 
And keep him out, or shall we let him in 
And see if we can get him out again?" 

A melancholy pleasure it is to see pictured in verse 
that streak of human nature that abandons a man in 

155 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

adversity, but hastens to do him honor when too late 
for such appreciation to be of any worth to the unfor- 
tunate. The brilHant Sheridan, orator, statesman, and 
poet, died, as you may remember, in poverty, harassed 
by hungry creditors and neglected by the society of 
learning, wealth and fashion that had fawned on him 
while his genius commanded the applause of Ustening 
senates. To his burial turned out all the ^lite of Lon- 
don, as if, instead of in a hovel, he had died a prince 
in a palace. 

O it sickens the heart to see bosoms so hollow. 
And friendships so false in the great and high-born; 
To think what a long line of titles may follow 
The relics of him who died friendless and lorn ! 

How proudly they press to the funeral array 
Of him whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow; 
How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day 
Whose pall shall be held by nobles to-morrow! 

And in the visions of romantic youth 
What years of endless bliss are yet to flow; 
But mortal pleasure, what art thou in truth? 
The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below; 

exclaims Campbell. 

To that sweet season is age apt to revert and con- 
trast its tardy pace of time in its flight when locks are 
gray and eyes begin to sight the gates that open to 
the undiscovered country. Hence Dryden's portrayal 
of the reflection: — 

The more we live more brief appear 
Our life's succeeding stages; 
156 



THE PLEASURES OF POETRY 

A day in childhood seems a year 
And years like passing ages. 

Heaven gives one years of fading strength 
Indemnifying fleetness, 
And those of youth a seeming length 
Proportioned to their sweetness. 

Doubtless we have all taken notice now and then 
of a certain type of piety, more or less prevalent in 
every Christian church of whatever denomination, 
like that, for instance, depicted by Pope. 

Together lay her prayer-book and her paint. 
At once t 'adorn the sinner and the saint. 

There is a poesy of measured, plaintive flow, with 
a pathos of sentiment and a tone of farewell in its 
accents, that singularly calms the spirit of man, tends 
as 't were to wean him of life or, if not that, serves 
somehow to soften the pang of the departure. In the 
dying hours of Daniel Webster at his Marshfield home 
by the sea, when his family and other friends were 
gathered silently round the bed, the great statesman, 
rousing as from deep thought and with a freshness of 
voice not unlike that heard from his lips at Bunker 
Hill, cried out, "Poetry! Poetry!" A momentary 
embarrassment ensued, lest none should make an 
appropriate selection. Presently the son, Fletcher, 
hastened to the library, and returning with a book and 
sitting by the father's side, softly read : — 

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. 
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, 
157 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

The plowman homeward plods his weary way 
And leaves the world to darkness and to me." 

"Yes, yes, that's it, that's it," said the dying Sec- 
retary of State. And the son read on, on near to the 
close, and ere long the mightiest of American orators 
breathed his last. 

Have you ever lisped the lines of that wondrous 
Elegy to lull you to sleep when naught else would quiet 
thought and allay the tossing of weariness.? 

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight. 
And all the air a solemn stillness holds. 
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight 
Or drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds. 

Keep on, keep on, and perchance, ere you have reached 
the final numbers, slumber will have enfolded you. 

Who has not felt a peculiar pleasure keeping step 
with constant conjecture in following those exquisitely 
ingenious lines of Byron's "Enigma"? Lest some of 
you may not have read or heard it, it not being found 
in all the Byronic editions, I will say that the answer 
to the enigma is a certain letter of the alphabet. If you 
should follow closely the lines and keep orthography 
in mind and the sound full or faint, you will no doubt 
readily detect the letter. 

'T was whispered in heaven, 't was muttered in hell 
And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell; 
On the confines of earth 't was permitted to rest 
And the depths of the ocean its presence confest; 
'T will be found in the sphere when riven asunder. 
Be seen in the lightning and heard in the thunder; 
158 



THE PLEASURES OF POETRY 

'T was allotted to man with his earliest breath. 

Attends at his birth and awaits him in death ; 

It presides o'er his honor, happiness and health. 

Is the prop of his house and the end of his wealth ; 

Without it the soldier, the seaman may roam. 

But woe to the wretch who expels it from home ; 

In the whispers of conscience its voice will be found. 

Nor e'en in the whirlwind of passion be drowned ; 

'T will not soften the heart, an d though deaf to the ear, 

'T will make it acutely and instantly hear; 

But in shade let it rest, like a delicate flower, 

O breathe on it softly, it dies in an hour. 

What a blast is this in exposure of what too often 
passes for administration of justice under human gov- 
ernment ! 

Plate sin with gold 
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; 
Arm it in rags, a pigmy straw doth pierce it. 

Not thus does the same peerless bard see the uneven 
weighted balances in the court on high. 

In the corrupted currents of this world 
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice. 
And oft 't is seen the wicked prize itself 
Buys out the law. But 't is not so above; 
There is no shuflBing; there the action lies 
In his true nature, and we ourselves compell'd 
E'en to the teeth and forehead of our faults 
To give in evidence . 

Sometimes a single line of verse is a whole volume of 
discourse in its expression of opposite ideas — ideas, 
say, of humanity and inhumanity. Rare indeed the line, 
but such the last but two of Byron's graphic picture of 
the Dying Gladiator, pouring out his life-blood before 

159 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

the heartless, shouting multitude of the Roman Coli- 
seum. I will recite as well as I may the two stanzas pic- 
turing the shocking scene and then repeat the line I 
refer to. 

I see before me the Gladiator lie; 
He leans upon his hand — his manly brow 
Consents to death, but conquers agony. 
And his drooped head sinks gradually low, 
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 
From the red gash, fall heavy one by one. 
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now 
The arena swims around him; he is gone 
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. 

He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes 
Were with his heart, and that was far away; 
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize. 
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay; 
There were his young barbarians all at play. 
There was their Dacian mother, he their sire. 
Butchered to make a Roman holiday; 
All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire 
And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire! 

Butchered to make a Roman holiday. 

There is humanity breathed in undertone, and there 
the inhumanity loudly expressed. 

Liberty! To us who value the boon it is pleasurable 
to read of the deathlessness of its spirit. 

Power at thee has launched 
His bolts and with his lightnings smitten thee; 
He could not quench the light thou hast from Heaven. 
Merciless power has dug thy dungeon deep. 
And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires. 
Have forged thy chain; yet, while he deems thee bound, 
160 



THE PLEASURES OF POETRY 

The links are shivered and the prison walls 
Fall outward ; terribly thou springest forth 
As springs the flame above a burning pile. 
And shoutest to the nations, who return 
Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies. 

In striking contrast with the undying nature of Lib- 
erty is the fleetness of fame. How Holmes marks its 
evanescence in his little poem on Bill and Joe! 

Ah! pensive scholar, what is fame? 
A fitful tongue of leaping flame; 
A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust 
That lifts a pinch of mortal dust. 
A few swift years and who can show 
Which dust was Bill and which was Joe? 

The sensations produced by music no poet within 
my limited reading has adequately described, perhaps 
for the reason that they are indescribable. Tom Moore's 
happy confession that language is unequal to the de- 
scription is more satisfactory than most of the attempts 
to versify the effect wrought by the lyre of Orpheus, or 
any of his imitators. 

Music! O how faint, how weak. 

Language fades before thy spell ! 

Why should feeling ever speak. 

When thou canst breathe her soul so well? 

There are songs that never fail to touch the heart- 
strings, however familiar, however oft repeated; that 
have in them that one touch of nature that makes all 
the world kin; whose very simplicity penetrates to the 
very depths of human feeling. Of such are "Home, 
Sweet Home," "Oft in the Stilly Night," "The Last 

161 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Rose of Summer," and " Auld Lang Syne." Not unlike 
these in touching simplicity and naturalness is that 
song, if we may so call it, of Thomas Hood, which, 
though of a diflferent order, still haunts us the same, 
however the poet's fond memories of childhood be 
shaded by the melancholies of age. 

I remember, I remember 

The house where I was born; 
The little window where the sun 

Came peeping in at morn; 
He never came a wink too soon, 

Nor brought too long a day; 
But now I often wish the night 

Had borne my breath away. 

I remember, I remember 

The roses, red and white, 
The violets and the lily-cups — 

Those flowers made of light ! 
The lilacs where the robin built. 

And where my brother set 
The laburnum on his birthday — 

The tree is living yet. 

I remember, I remember 

Where I was used to swing. 
And thought the air must rush as fresh 

To swallows on the wing; 
My spirit flew in feathers then 

That is so heavy now. 
And summer pools could scarcely cool 

The fever on my brow. 

I remember, I remember 

The fir-trees dark and high; 
I used to think the slender tops 

Were close against the sky; 
162 



THE PLEASURES OF POETRY 

It was a childish ignorance. 

But now 't is little joy 
To know I 'm farther o£P from heaven 

Than when I was a boy. 



However great our enjoyment in beholding the glo- 
ries of natural, terrestrial scenery, enhanced is the keen- 
ness of it if our emotions be voiced in the outburst of 
some impassioned lover of nature pouring himself out 
in poetic strain. So Bryant, back for a while from the 
metropolis to his Berkshire hills, gives unaffected voice 
to the rapture that possesses him. 

I stand upon my native hills again. 

Broad, round and green, that in the summer sky, 

With garniture of grass and grain. 

Orchards and beechen forests, basking lie. 

While deep the sunless glens are scoop'd between. 

Where brawl o'er shallow beds the streams unseen. 

Here have I 'scaped the city's stifling heat. 
Its horrid sounds and its polluted air. 
And where the season's milder fervors beat, 
And gales that sweep the forest borders, bear 
The song of bird and sound of running stream, 
And come awhile to wander and to dream. 
Aye, flame thy fiercest, sun, thou canst not wake 
In this pure air that plague that walks unseen. 
The maize leaf and the maple bough but take 
From thy strong heats a deeper, glossier green; 
The mountain wind that faints not in thy ray. 
Sweeps the blue streams of pestilence away. 

The mountain wind! most spiritual thing of all 
The wide earth knows; when, in the sultry time. 
He stoops him from his vast cerulean hall. 
He seems the breath of a celestial cUme, 
163 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

As if from heaven's wide open gates did blow 
Health and refreshment on the world below. 

If we turn from the land to the sea, our mood some- 
times is to see it as seen in the placid, dreamy lines of 
Longfellow: — 

It is the sea, it is the sea 
In all its vague immensity. 
Fading and darkening in the distance ! 
Silent, majestical and slow 
The white ships haunt it to and fro. 
With all their ghostly sails unfurled. 
As phantoms from another world 
Haunt the dim confines of existence ! 
But ah! how few can comprehend 
Their signals or to what good end 
From land to land they come and go! 
Upon a sea more vast and dark 
The spirits of the dead embark. 
All voyaging to unknown coasts. 
We wave our farewells from the shore 
And they depart and come no more 
Or come as phantoms and as ghosts. 

But if we would employ the speech of poetry to en- 
able us to hold communion with the deep, its grandeur, 
its vastness, its vehemence, the sublimity of its might 
and the solemnity of its calm, its awful beauty and 
ceaseless undulation, whether viewing the expanse 
from shore or ship, we have all the help our sense can 
crave in the matchless apostrophe of Byron : — 

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean — roll! 
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; 
Man marks the earth with ruin, his control 
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain 
164 



THE PLEASURES OF POETRY 

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 

A shadow of man's ravage, save his own. 

When for a moment, like a drop of rain. 

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, 

Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined and unknown. 

I readily assume that you are too familiar with the 
entire apostrophe to indulge me here in repetition of it. 
It is such a burst of poetic genius that every one 
should hold it in memory, line on line, as he surveys 
the ocean, whether 

Calm or convulsed, in breeze or gale or storm. 
Icing the pole or in the torrid clime 
Dark-heaving, boundless, endless and sublime. 

But ah! over and above the land and the sea are 
the heavens, and if we would behold them with the 
poet's eye, our vision always finds aid in the familiar 
paraphrase of the Nineteenth Psalm by Addison. 

The spacious firmament on high. 

With all the blue, ethereal sky. 

And spangled heavens, a shining frame. 

Their great Oriqinal proclaim. 

The unwearied sun, from day to day. 

Does his Creator's power display. 

And publishes to every land 

The work of an Almighty hand. 

Soon as the evening shades prevail. 
The moon takes up the wondrous tale 
And nightly to the listening earth 
Repeats the story of her birth ; 
While all the stars that round her burn 
And all the planets in their turn. 
Confirm the tidings as they roll 
And spread the truth from pole to pole. 
165 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

What though in solemn silence all 
Move round the dark terrestrial ball; 
What though no real voice or sound 
Amid their radiant orbs be found? 
In reason's ear they all rejoice 
And utter forth a glorious voice, 
Forever singing as they shine, 
" The hand that made us is divine! " 

Finally, if we would feel the blood of patriotism 
stirred, feel the thrill of the love of country, not so 
much in passion for war, yet in such willingness for 
sacrifice as makes one feel 't is sweet and beautiful to 
die for his country, — 

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, — 
nothing, nothing perhaps of verse so touches the 
patriot heart-strings of us of America as the good old 
national hymn. Suppose we all rise and join in singing 
the opening stanza, — 

My country, 't is of thee, 
Sweet land of liberty. 

Of thee I sing; 
Land where my fathers died. 
Land of the Pilgrims' pride. 
From every mountain side. 

Let freedom ring. 



THE STORY OF THE TRIP TO NEW 
BERN TO DEDICATE THE MONU- 
MENT TO MASSACHUSETTS SOL- 
DIERS 

TOLD AT A MEETING OF THE LOYAL LEGION 
IN BOSTON, DECEMBER 3, 1908 

Of the many veterans and others who made the 
trip last month to New Bern, North Carolina, for the 
purpose of dedicating the monument there recently 
erected in the national cemetery to our Massachusetts 
soldier-dead, there are not a few, I am sure, right here 
in this hall who could give you a far better account of 
the trip and the occasion than myself, and I hardly 
know why I am here to attempt the story. My narra- 
tion must needs be quite imperfect, for I have taken 
no such time to methodize and phrase it as I would 
or ought before addressing an audience so large and 
intelligent, even though indisposed to be critical, as 
the one I see here before me. Besides, I am of late 
somehow seriously failing in language, so absolutely 
impossible did I find it to express the sensations that 
possessed me upon revisiting New Bern and its vicin- 
ity after the lapse of three and forty years. We are 
sometimes led to feel that we cannot to much purpose 

167 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

talk about a matter, however much we may know 
about it; and others, I suspect, not less than myself, 
so felt when we got down there in Carolina under the 
old Flag and tried to realize the measureless dissim- 
ilarity of conditions now and then. 

I suppose it is altogether true that Massachusetts 
lost more men, far more men, during the war, in North 
Carolina, than any other state that contended for 
the integrity of the Union. A conservative estimate 
has placed the number at not less than three thousand, 
either as killed in battle or dying from disease or the 
effects of wounds. 

As early as 1867 the government procured several 
acres of a plain about two miles from New Bern town 
and enclosed and otherwise laid out the land for a 
cemetery. The area was subsequently enlarged, until 
at present the cemetery comprises about seven acres, 
and later improvements, including the planting of 
trees, have added much to the comeliness of the burial 
ground. As often as the remains of any Massachusetts 
Union soldiers have been discovered in any part of 
the state they have been disinterred and re-interred 
there, until now there are about five hundred graves 
of our Massachusetts soldier-dead in the quiet cem- 
etery, all marked with head-stones, each indicating 
as well as may be the person of the sleeping patriot 
boy who wore the blue. Yet not till a time compara- 
tively recent was there any definite action taken for 
the erection of a monument in memory of those dead 

168 



A TRIP TO NEW BERN 

who so gave up their lives that government of, by and 
for the people might not perish from the earth. Other 
states, notably Connecticut and New Jersey, years 
ago had set up monuments there, though their dead 
combined and doubled in the Old North State are far 
less than those of the Old Bay State. At last General 
Frankle, — praise be to his name ! — who was Colonel 
of the 2nd Heavy Artillery, along with a few others, 
roused himself and resolved that there should go up 
down there near New Bern some monumental token 
of the state's respect and gratitude, if possibly some 
effective appeal could be made to our Legislature. 

Accordingly a petition was started, and by much 
industry was numerously signed by veterans and other 
citizens, business men and other men of character and 
influence. With it we went before the Joint Legislative 
Committee on Military Affairs and had a hearing. 
The committee were attentive and sympathetic, and 
so well was the case of the petitioners made out that 
at the close of the hearing some members of the com- 
mittee did not hesitate to say that if the petition had 
asked for an appropriation of ten instead of five thou- 
sand dollars, the prayer might have been granted. 
A resolve was reported, appropriating five thousand 
dollars, and it went through both branches of the 
General Court without much, if any, dissent. 

Then a monument committee was appointed, con- 
sisting of General Jones Frankle, General A. B. R. 
Sprague, Major Daniel W. Hammond, Major Charles 

169 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

B. Amory, Captain Joseph A. Moore, Sergeant Ephraim 
Stearns, and Corporal James B. Gardner, the latter 
as secretary. They employed for a sculptor Malgar 
H. Mosman of Chicopee, himself a veteran, an accom- 
plished designer of many soldiers' monuments and 
other similar works of note. The design was cast in 
the well-known Ames foundry of Chicopee, and in 
due time the cast was erected in the cemetery by the 
sexton thereof, under directions of the committee in 
association with the sculptor. It is a bronze female 
figure of "History," mounted on a base of Barre 
granite, with bronze tablets on three sides and dedi- 
catory inscriptions thereon. The statue or figure of 
History is represented as inscribing on a shield held 
in the left hand this sentiment : — 

AFTER LOYAL SERVICE, UNION AND PEACE 

Good authorities have pronounced the figure grace- 
ful, excellent in proportion, and beautiful in detail. 

At the late session of the Legislature (1908) an 
appropriation of four thousand dollars was made to be 
expended for the proper representation of the Common- 
wealth at the dedication of the monument. The 
resolve of appropriation provided that the state dele- 
gation for that purpose should consist of the Governor, 
the Lieutenant Governor, two members of the Gov- 
ernor's Council, the chief and one other of the Gov- 
ernor's Staff , the President and Clerk of the Senate, the 
Speaker and Clerk of the House, the Joint Legislative 

170 



A TRIP TO NEW BERN 

Committee on Military Affairs, two representatives of 
each of the seventeen regiments that served in North 
Carohna, and such other guests as His Excellency 
might personally invite. His Excellency invited two 
ladies to act in unveiling the monument and one 
esteemed Recorder of this Commandery whose pre- 
sence with us all the while was a joy and an inspiration. 

Here I should say that we had to regret the absence 
of the Governor by reason of ill-health, and also that 
of the Lieutenant Governor and Speaker Cole. 

Besides the state or official delegation there were 
two others, volunteers, so to speak, who paid their 
own expenses, starting before and getting to New Bern 
in advance of the official delegation, and getting, too, 
some of them, better hotel accommodations than did 
some of the official dignitaries. The latter left Boston 
Monday evening, November 9, and arrived at New- 
Bern Wednesday forenoon the 11th, at half -past nine 
o'clock. Going down, we stopped in Washington 
Tuesday six or eight hours by day, and returning 
tarried there Friday a like number of hours of day- 
light. We saw considerable of the capital, saw the 
Capitol, of which the Indian said, "White man no 
make that, Great Spirit make that"; saw the Supreme 
Court, the Congressional Library, the towering monu- 
ment to the Father of his Country, the White House, 
and President Roosevelt, The chief magistrate was 
very gracious and, though not much used to speaking, 
made us a little speech, ending it with the remark, 

171 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

"You who went to the war did well, but your wives 
who staid at home did better"; rather an equivocal 
distinction perhaps. 

Our travel was mostly by night, some of us not 
sleeping much, owing in part to the good-natured 
hilarity of some of the fellow passengers, and partly 
because we were not all of us good sleepers in "Pull- 
man sleepers." 

Arrived at New Bern, our reception was generous, 
hearty, hospitable. If possible, it was rather warmer 
than that which awaited us forty-six years before. 
The population, uncolored as well as colored, all was 
in a rivalry to welcome us. We failed to detect any 
trace of sourness or soreness or even lingering disap- 
pointment. The darkies bubbled over. The generation 
that had come upon the stage knew by tradition who 
the "Yanks" were, and they eyed us as friends. The 
radiance of their faces added not a little to the bright 
sunshine of the day. 

The day of our arrival was the day of the dedication, 
beginning at two p. m., and an ideal day it was — a 
cloudless sky, no undue breeze, the temperature about 
that of July in New England, overcoats not needed, 
hardly middle-weight flannels. The Mayor of the city 
and others of the municipal government were with us. 
The banks, schools, and stores were nearly all closed, 
and the town had a holiday aspect. 

The several delegations formed in line at the Gaston 
House, and, escorted by a military company from 

172 



A TRIP TO NEW BERN 

Kinston, the New Bern Naval Reserve, and the local 
Confederate Camp, marched to the music of the Kin- 
ston band to the railroad station, where cars were 
taken to a point near the cemetery. Re-forming there, 
we marched into the cemetery and took position gen- 
erally around the monument, those having parts in 
the exercises taking seats on the platform, facing the 
veiled monument a few rods away. The throng of 
people there gathered numbered by estimate four 
thousand, about half of whom were the colored pop- 
ulation in their best attire. 

Chairman Frankle of the committee called the 
assembly to order, and a fervent prayer was offered 
by the Reverend Doctor Hall of the 44th Regiment. 
The school children, the girls in white with uncovered 
heads, then finely sang the "Blue and the Gray." 
Next, the secretary of the committee, Mr. Gardner, 
read a letter from Governor Guild, deeply regretting 
his inability to be present and eloquently referring 
to the occasion so intimately associated with the name 
of the Commonwealth. 

Following the letter the sculptor in a few words 
presents his work to the committee, and then the 
monument is unveiled, three ladies aptly manipulating 
a cord and the Stars and Stripes falling from the statue 
and gathering in folds round the pedestal and base, 
each lady a moment thereafter being presented with 
a liberal bouquet. 

Here I should pause to speak a word or two of those 
173 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

ladies. Mrs. Hartsfield, a New Bern lady, was invited 
to participate in the ceremony out of courtesy to her 
husband, Colonel Hartsfield, commander of the Con- 
federate Camp. Alice Alden Sprague, the fair youth- 
ful daughter of our Commander, General Sprague, 
is a lineal descendant of John Alden and Priscilla 
Mullens of the Mayflower. Of the other, Mrs. Laura 
A, Dugan, there is a tale at once pathetic and pleasant. 
In the time of the yellow fever at New Bern in 1864, 
that scourge that so decimated the ranks of combatants 
and non-combatants, one of the unwritten chapters, 
I may say, of the story of the Civil War, Colonel Amory 
of the 17th Regiment, together with his wife and four 
children, was at Beaufort, not far from New Bern. 
Both the father and the mother died of the fever, 
leaving Laura, a babe five months old. Colonel 
Frankle, then in command of the defenses of New Bern, 
had much to do in caring for the orphan children, and 
more than once had this infant in his arms, though 
Mrs. Palmer, the wife of the general, had the special 
care of the child. As soon as transportation could be 
provided consistently with the quarantine, the child 
was taken to her grandparents near Boston, and there 
lived till adopted by her uncle. Major Amory, of our 
Order. After forty-four years Mrs. Dugan returned to 
New Bern to see her birthplace, even the house where 
she was born, and to help unveil the monument erected 
in memory of comrades in the same local service as her 
gallant father. Hardly should I omit to add that the 

174 



A TRIP TO NEW BERN 

lady who so officiated is highly accomplished and 
singularly beautiful, insomuch that she attracted gen- 
eral attention, and all the more because she seemed 
literally unconscious of the unusual charms she pos- 
sesses. 

As the flag dropped from the statue, and the bright 
sun shone upon the glossy bronze, there was an in- 
voluntary expression of admiration. From a woman 
very near the side of the platform came the voice, 
"Oh, how beautiful!" I turned and saw that the ad- 
mirer was a lady of obvious taste and refinement. 
On our way homeward I mentioned the incident to the 
sculptor, and he thought it among the finest compli- 
ments he had received. 

The chairman of the committee, in a brief, apt 
address, now accepts the monument and presents it 
to the State of Massachusetts. In an address exceed- 
ingly appropriate President Chappie of the Senate, 
representing the Governor, accepts it and turns it 
over for proper care to the sexton of the Cemetery as a 
representative of the United States. This done, the 
band renders the "Star-Spangled Banner." The 
dedicatory address follows and the exercises conclude 
with "America" by the band, the great congregation 
joining to swell the strain of the national hymn. 

In the same way we came from the town we re- 
turned, and upon arrival at the hotel the band played 
"Dixie," then "Marching through Georgia," and 
finally "America" again, the crowd singing at the 

175 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

tops of their voices, and crowning the conclusion with 
three rousing cheers for the Kinston band, whose 
music, be it said, was spirited, cultivated, and almost 
Bostonian. 

Some supplement now there is to all this that has 
been so imperfectly set forth, and perhaps it were 
worth your while to hear it. 

In the evening following the dedication the Daugh- 
ters of the Confederacy gave in their decorated hall 
a reception to the Yankees. It was aflfable, kind, and 
touching. The collation was both bountiful and dainty. 
The singing of their songs was stirring and sweet. The 
chat and charms of the Daughters and their uncon- 
scious overtures were so fascinating, so irresistible, 
that some, if not all of us, nearly surrendered, so did 
Cupid's darts take effect. Almost we wished that we 
were young once more, that we might be beaux if not 
"rebs." 

As you of course know, a certain frankness and 
spontaneity are characteristic of the fair below Mason 
and Dixon's line. While equally modest with our dear 
women above the line, they are notably less reserved 
and coy. At the risk of being a little personal, I ven- 
ture to mention a little incident in illustration of their 
naivete, if that be the right word. With Mrs. Stevens, 
the President of the local chapter of the Daughters, 
I had some conversation, and in the course of it allu- 
sion was made to the Daughters of the American 
Revolution, and I said I had a niece who was State 

176 



A TRIP TO NEW BERN 

Regent of the Massachusetts organization. "Oh! do 
tell me!" she said, "how I wish I could send her some- 
thing. Please excuse me a moment. ' ' And she withdrew 
and presently returned with a bunch of beautiful 
pinks and asked if I would be so kind as to send that 
to my niece. I thought I would and did. But as if 
that were not enough, the next evening when we were 
all aboard the train and about to start home, Mrs. 
Stevens came hurrying through it with her husband, 
inquiring for "Major" Putnam. 

A lot of titles I got down South. The Southrons, you 
know, are fond of them and liberal in bestowing them. 
I was styled "captain." To that I think a committee 
of this commandery has found me entitled. Then I was 
called "Judge," whether rightly some lawyers may 
doubt. Then "Major," then "General" and lastly 
"Chaplain." When I saw the latter in the New Bern 
Journal there was a minister near at hand and I asked 
him whether he thought I was going up or down in 
rank; He looked rather queer and said he thought 
some might take me for a clergyman. I told him I did 
have a narrow escape. 

But as I was saying, Mrs. Stevens came hurrying 
through the train and at last came upon "Major" 
Putnam. She had in her hand a dozen or more minia- 
ture flags of the stars and bars each upon a staff, one 
of silk and the rest of coarser fibre, just the sort of 
memento our boys had been most eager to get. The 
one of silk she gave me for my niece and the rest she 

177 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

distributed to the old boys in blue, who gathered wist- 
fully around her till the stock was exhausted. 

Besides the reception by the Daughters, the Mayor 
of the city and the resident judge of the Superior Court 
came to the hotel and cordially received us in the par- 
lor. The Congressman of the district chartered the 
revenue cutter, "Pamlico," and took us up the Neuse 
River, past various points of interest associated with 
the war; the leading lawyer of the city, Mr. White- 
hurst, who entered the Confederate service at sixteen, 
and another lawyer, Mr. Dunn, took a party of us 
across the Trent to see "James City," which they re- 
garded as about as interesting as anything in or about 
New Bern, — a typical darky village of about a 
thousand inhabitants, which had grown up since the 
war-time, typical in its huts, shanties and appurte- 
nances, its fences, streets and gardens, its cats, dogs, 
hens, ducks, razor-back pigs, and little shiny-eyed, tod- 
dling darkies all about the door-ways. 

One of our darky drivers over the long bridge 
spanning the Trent, half a mile long, was a character. 
I asked him if he voted. "No." — "Why not?" — 
"Why, day make ye read a paper as long as from 
here to dat yare mule dar, and den day ax ye questions. 
I got 'bout half froo and den cried quits. 'T ain't no 
use, O 't ain't no use. De freeholder can vote, O yes, 
he can vote." 

We all more or less visited the old places, the forts 
and the camping-grounds, the fields of battle and 

178 



A TRIP TO NEWBERNE 

skirmish. We found them changed, all changed; the 
fields overgrown with wood or cultured for cotton, 
and the forts sunk, sloped or wooded quite past 
recognition. So kind nature hastens to efface the 
physical evidences of man's ill nature to man, even 
as she has softened the personal and sectional ani- 
mosities of men against one another, once arrayed in 
deadly combat. 

Along with the old-time places we noted a growth 
of the town, a beautification in many a spot, a con- 
siderable prosperity, and a promise of greater growth, 
more beauty, and a prosperity more pronounced in a 
future not distant. 

We started homeward Thursday evening. On the 
way we took up a collection for the purchase of a 
testimonial to the Daughters of the Confederacy, 
raised a hundred and more dollars, and chose a com- 
mittee to select the testimonial and forward it to 
the "girls we left behind us." We arrived in Boston 
Saturday morning at quarter past seven, exactlj^ on 
schedule-time. 

Looking back over the way, and at the memorial 
ceremony, we failed to recall an accident, a miscarriage, 
a hitch or a jar either in the trip or the dedication. 
A breakfast awaited us at the restaurant of the South 
Station. Thither we repaired, and after the repast the 
Sergeant-at-Arms made a speech. He commended us 
for our good behavior. He seemed to feel himself 
bound in the name of the Commonwealth to do so. 

179 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

Other junkets he had engineered, but never had he 
known young men to behave much better. As children 
who had never before been abroad, we unanimously 
voted him thanks for his service, and especially for 
his commendation. Wrapping the letter in our memo- 
ries, each of us then grasped his favorite, trusty satchel, 
and with good-byes on our lips we separated, feeling 
that we had had a fine time and rather memorable, 
however our joys were commingled with reflections 
of sadness as we remembered the war with its sacrifices 
and its gains, its sorrows and its triumphs. We all 
felt, I think, that we loved our country a little better 
than we did ere we revisited the Old North State on 
so dutiful a mission after so many years of absence 
from the soil where grows as nowhere else the lofty, 
long-leafed Pine. 



ADDRESS 

AT THE DEDICATION OF THE SOL- 
DIERS' MONUMENT ERECTED IN 
MEMORY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS 
SOLDIER-DEAD IN THE NATIONAL 
CEMETERY AT NEW BERN, NORTH 
CAROLINA, NOVEMBER 11, 1908^ 

Ladies, Comrades and Gentlemen : — 

In common with all of you who are here, cherishing 
remembrance of old regimental associations, I rejoice 
ever so much in the erection at last of a monument in 
memory of our Massachusetts soldier-dead here in 
this southern state. To you as to me it must seem 
right, salutary, and beautiful. As it was said by Web- 
ster upon the completion of Bunker Hill Monument, 
so may we also not inappropriately now say, "A duty 
has been performed." If so, then may we all rejoice 
here together, whether we be of the Old Bay State or 
the Old North State. 

Assuming, as perhaps we may, that there prevails 
here such a unanimity of sentiment, nothing can be 
much more impressive, gratifying and heart-gladden- 

' Reprinted from Massachusetts Memorial to the Soldiers and 
Sailors Who Died in the Department of North Carolina, 1861-1865. 

181 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

ing than this simple occasion. A single thought beyond 
all others at this hour must needs possess us, as we 
recall the sanguinary and tempestuous past, and then 
consider our mission here to-day, so peaceful, and our 
treatment here received to-day, so hospitable and 
fraternal under this Carolina sky. Two score and more 
years it is since I toiled beneath it in the hot, sultry 
summer of sixty -four, and almost I am overcome as 
thought comes over me of the measureless dissimi- 
larity of conditions now and then. 

Verily, it is one of the happiest signs — rather it is 
the happiest of all signs — of the fraternal solidity 
of our country, that the people of the northern states, 
through their representatives, can come down here 
among the people of the southern states for the pur- 
pose of erecting and dedicating memorials in memory 
of their soldier-dead and feel that they come among 
friends. 

Looking back three and forty years, and recalling 
the relations of the two great sections of the land, 
northern and southern, then fresh from a fiery conflict 
of four years' duration, how little did we dream that 
at any time hence the country would be so cemented 
in the bonds of complete union as it is to-day! Then, 
to be sure, there was peace; arms had ceased to clash; 
campaigns were no longer in contemplation; soldiers, 
weary, were retiring to their homes, and glad, glad to 
retire, and but one flag was recognized to be in author- 
ity. But oh! what sores were bleeding, what animosi- 

182 



SOLDIERS' MONUMENT AT NEW BERN 

ties were still alive, what disappointments were still 
felt, and abov6 all, what convictions still remained 
on the one side and the other that the one was right 
and the other wrong in the tremendous struggle ! 

How out of so much soreness could there come 
friendliness? How out of so much antagonism could 
there come unity? How out of states discordant, if not 
dissevered, acrimonious, if not still belligerent, should 
there come a republic one and indivisible? None could 
quite say. None could forecast. It was beyond the 
ken of man to see, beyond the scope of statesmanship 
to devise. 

Nevertheless, all the while from the inception of the 
conflict, through all its entanglements and flaming 
fields, down to the season of ultimate reconciliation, 
there was a divinity shaping our ends, rough hew them 
how we might. If we cannot point to this, that or 
the other measure of human device or any number of 
human devices combined, which led us to feel and 
believe it far better that we should dwell together 
in peace as a people of one blood, we can yet somehow 
understand what manner of Providence it was that 
wrought the consummation. Who shall say that we 
were not inspired by the God of hosts to contemplate 
afresh this continent of our denizenship, so washed 
by ocean on the east and the west, so laved by incom- 
parable lakes on the north and bounded so much on 
the south by the grand old Gulf; with mighty rivers 
coursing from their mountain sources in every direc- 

183 



ARTHUR A. PUTNAM 

tion, with manifold mines of untold wealth still asleep 
in their rocky beds, with a soil leaping for culture and 
forests primeval beckoning the axe, and all to tempt 
the hands of a common industry ; and thus contemplat- 
ing, to see and know that Nature herself, here as no- 
where else, had fashioned a land and bountifully 
stocked it for the abode and growth, the power and 
happiness of one people under one government, the 
Stars and Stripes for its ensign, no star henceforth to 
be erased, no stripe to be polluted, its motto evermore 
to be, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and 
inseparable." 



S^P 19 19W 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



